EarlyWord

The last unpublished works of Fitzgerald’s will hit shelves on April 11, 2017. The collection is titled I’d Die For You: And Other Lost Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Anne Margaret Daniel (S&S/Scribner).

According to The Guardian, quoting a Scribner statement, the works include magazine pieces that were never published as well as works Fitzgerald could not sell in the 1930s because their “subject matter or style departed from what editors expected.”

Scribner goes on to say that the collection features:

“Fitzgerald writing about controversial topics, depicting young men and women who actually spoke and thought more as young men and women did, without censorship … Rather than permit changes and sanitising by his contemporary editors, Fitzgerald preferred to let his work remain unpublished, even at a time when he was in great need of money and review attention.”

Scribner reports the title story is “drawn from Fitzgerald’s stays in the mountains of North Carolina when his health, and that of his wife Zelda, was falling apart … Most of the stories [in the collection] come from this time period, during the middle and late 1930s, though the collection spans Fitzgerald’s career from 1920 to the end of his life.”

Last year another lost story by Fitzgerald made news. It was then published in The Strand magazine and was praised by Laura Miller in Slate.

The number one pick of the just released list of monthly librarian favorites for October is News of the World by Paulette Jiles (HC/William Morrow).

“Readers fortunate enough to meet Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an old ex-soldier who makes a living reading the news to townspeople in 1870s Texas, and Joanna, the Indian captive he is charged with returning to her relatives, will not soon forget them. Everything, from the vividly realized Texas frontier setting to the characters is beautifully crafted, right up to the moving conclusion. Both the Captain and Joanna have very distinctive voices. Wonderful storytelling.” — Beth Mills, New Rochelle Public Library, New Rochelle, NY

Additional Buzz: It is also an Indie Next selection for October.

Below are highlights of some of the other 9 titles on the list:

The Mothers (PRH/Riverhead; Penguin Audio/BOT).

“In a contemporary Black community in California, the story begins with a secret. Nadia is a high school senior, mourning her mother’s recent death, and smitten with the local pastor’s son, Luke. It’s not a serious romance, but it takes a turn when a pregnancy (and subsequent cover-up) happen. The impact sends ripples through the community. The Mothers asks us to contemplate how our decisions shape our lives. The collective voice of the Mothers in the community is a voice unto itself, narrating and guiding the reader through the story.” — Jennifer Ohzourk, St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis

Additional Buzz: The October Indie Next #1 pick, it also appears on the Fall Reading lists from Amazon’s Editors, BuzzFeed, New York Magazine, and WSJ.

Crosstalk, Connie Willis (PRH/Del Rey; OverDrive Sample).

“Crosstalk is the perfect romantic comedy for the digital age. Briddey works for a cell phone provider that is constantly searching for the next great way to help people “connect” – nevermind that she is already inundated by calls, texts, social media, and unannounced visits from her colleagues, friends, and nosy family. When she undergoes a procedure to telepathically sense the emotions of her seemingly perfect boyfriend, things go awry and she ends up connected to the wrong person. A perfect screwball comedy from a master writer!” — Patricia Kline-Millard, Bedford Public Library, Bedford, NH

Additional Buzz: It is on io9’s list of All the New Scifi and Fantasy Books You Absolutely Must Read This Fall,

A number of other titles selected by librarians also got nods from booksellers via the newly released Indie Next list, including:

The Trespasser, Tana French (PRH/Viking; Penguin Audio/BOT).

Small Great Things, Jodi Picoult (PRH/Ballantine; RH Audio/BOT).

Today Will Be Different, Maria Semple (Hachette/Little, Brown; Blackstone Audio).

The Other Einstein, Marie Benedict (Sourcebooks Landmark; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

The full list of ten librarian picks is available online.

Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine have released a book outlining their policies and plans, using  their campaign slogan as the title, Stronger Together (S&S).

The L.A. Times reports that the 288-page trade paperback (an ebook version has been released as well) is full of details:

“the minutiae is the point. The political aim of the book is less to be a gripping page turner than to make the case that Donald Trump doesn’t even have the material to publish such a book if he were so inclined.”

The book is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings. The customer reviews section indicates that people are either strongly “with her” or strongly not. So far, but based on just 12 reviews, 58% of the ratings are 5 stars and 42% are just one star, with none in between.

Children’s author and illustrator Anna Dewdney died at 50 of  brain cancer on Sept. 3. She is known for her Llama Llama picture books, starting with Llama Llama Red Pajama. The series runs to nearly 20 titles and has sold more than 10 million copies, reports PW.

Librarians may also know Dewdney as a frequent speaker in schools and libraries and as an ardent supporter of children’s literacy. In 2013 she wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

“When we read with a child, we are doing so much more than teaching him to read or instilling in her a love of language … We are doing something that I believe is just as powerful, and it is something that we are losing as a culture: by reading with a child, we are teaching that child to be human. When we open a book, and share our voice and imagination with a child, that child learns to see the world through someone else’s eyes.”

She was so committed to reading that she requested that, in lieu of a funeral,  people read to a child.

Two posthumous projects are in the works. PW reports that Dewdney had completed a picture book for Penguin titled, Little Excavator. It is scheduled for release in early June 2017 from Viking.

Netflix is also planning an animated Llama Llama series to air in 2017. Deadline Hollywood reports that Jennifer Garner is on board to voice Mama Llama. Netflix says that “The series is led by an all-star team of creators including Oscar-winning director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King), director Saul Blinkoff (Doc McStuffins) [and] … legendary art director Ruben Aquino (Frozen, The Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan).”

Below is video of Dewdney at one of the places she loved, a book festival.

The Red Bandanna: Welles Crowther, 9/11, and the Path to Purpose by Tom Rinaldi (PRH/Penguin; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, leaping over thousands of other titles to move from #6,305 to #15.

The dramatic jump coincides with a feature on Good Morning America.

The book recounts the heroic actions of Welles Crowther who worked for an investment banking firm at the World Trade Center. Crowther had planned to leave the firm to join the fire department, finally fulfilling a life long dream.

He was still working for the bank on 9/11, 2001 and he sacrificed his life to save at least five others, leading people out of the tower and then returning to help more. He was identified by the red bandanna he wore as a mask against the smoke.

His body was found, reports the New York Post, six months into the cleanup efforts. He was with a group of firemen who also perished working to save others.

President Obama honored Crowther during his  remarks at the dedication of the National September 11 Memorial Museum in 2014.

Libraries we checked are showing modest holds on light orders but given the approaching anniversary, this is a book that could take off.

Below is the archived version of the latest GalleyChat. Watch for our summary of top titles in the next two weeks.

Join us for the next GalleyChat, Tues., Oct 4, 4 to 5 p.m. ET (3:30 for virtual cocktails).

Details here.

The Wall Street Journal adds to the fall previews with their picks of 32 books to fill the fall with reading. The list mixes fiction and nonfiction and highlights new books tracing the legacy of the Holocaust [subscription may be required].

One of the titles certain to interest librarians, that has not yet appeared on any other preview, is The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel, Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press). It asks if an algorithm can identify the elements of a blockbuster novel and provides answers based on a five-year study.

This approach is not new. FiveThirtyEight data mined blockbuster films to see what they could find as defining features and found 11 commonalities and for years researchers have been looking into what makes a hit song.

WSJ profiles the authors, who studied over 5,000 novels and claim their method can “pick out a future New York Times-list best seller with 80% accuracy.”

Their process focuses on “2,800 features including points of theme, style, vocabulary and punctuation … [and has found] subject, not genre, has a much greater impact on driving a best seller.”

Archer and Jockers have also found less is more, “Bestselling novels tend to have one or two topics which often feed off each other such as ‘children and guns’ or ‘love and vampires’ that together make up nearly a third of the novel whereas novels that fail to hit often try to cram too many topics in.” John Grisham and Danielle Steel have proven that fact, they say, staying on point within their individual niches.

The book has touched a nerve with some acquisitions editors, making them wonder if their jobs are on the line. We suspect plenty of readers and authors will also read the book with a wary, if interested, eye.

Proving a number of librarians and reporters correct, Oprah has announced her next book club title selection,  Love Warrior: A Memoir, Glennon Doyle Melton (Macmillan/Flatiron Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample), publishing today.

Oprah made the announcement on CBS This Morning in a video message saying the memoir is daring and raw and all women will see themselves in its pages.

The book was already doing well in pre-pub orders, with the title rising over the last three weeks on Amazon. On today’s news the book rose to #16 on the Amazon Top 100, behind the previous pick, Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad, which is at #12. Fans already knew Melton from her first book, Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, a collection of essays from her website Momastery.com.

This new memoir recounts Melton’s discovery that her husband had been unfaithful and the spiritual journey she takes during the process of rebuilding her marriage. The description in the readers guide for the book club says that “Glennon reconsiders far more than her marriage and discovers what it means to be true to oneself, to claim her true identity as a Love Warrior.”

The coverage and reaction to the pick is thus far more muted than the splashy roll out and multiple reviews that greeted the announcement of Underground Railroad just a few weeks ago.

Oprah has not explained why she’s doing another book so quickly or if doing so indicates she is stepping up the program.

UDPDATE:

Way back in May, our own GalleyChatter, Robin Beerbower was prescient in her review on GoodReads and on Edelweiss:

What struck me most about the memoir was her courage, candor, and honesty in relating the most intimate details of her life and marriage. Definitely a winner for women’s book groups and for those who can’t wait for Oprah’s memoir to be published–in fact, if Oprah still regularly did a book selection for her show, I could see this as an easy choice.

Also, for some reason this reminded me a bit of Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, a collection of honest and compassionate essays. I would also compare Love Warrior to Joan Anderson’s books about her separation and rebuilding of her marriage (A Year by the Sea and An Unfinished Marriage), although Melton’s book is more beautifully written.

Betting is underway on who will win the Nobel Prize in Literature with Japan’s Haruki Murakami topping the list.

He may be the Susan Lucci of authors, having led the betting for the last three years, only to see Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarussian journalist and oral historian take the prize last year, French novelist Patrick Modiano win in 2014 and Canadian Alice Munro in 2013.

He is not alone. Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates and Irish writer John Banville annually get bandied about as the bookies make odds and this year is no different. Roth is the third favorite to win with Oates right behind him. Banville’s odds have, oddly enough, fallen out of the top 10. Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, another frequent pick for several years, is still in the top five.

There is a new name in the top three, Adunis, the pen name for a Syrian poet and essayist, has risen through the ranks and is now holding the #2 spot on the oddsmakers list.

Predictably unpredictable, the Nobel Prize in Literature has baffled odds makers for years and is just as likely to go to a  dark horse this year.

The exact announcement date has yet to be set but is most often awarded in early to mid October.

Elizabeth Letts’s The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis (Random House/Ballantine; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) has landed at #17 on the NYT extended hardcover nonfiction list.

The NYT highlights Lett’s in the “Inside the List” feature, noting that while WWII is a perennially popular subject, recently it seems books on the “quirky corners of the war” are particularly gaining ground. Like The Monuments Men before it, Lett’s book recounts a little-known mission during the waning days of the war, to save prized Lipizzaner stallions. The Nazis had abducted the horses, stockpiling them as part of a plan to create a super breed. With the war ending, supplies short, and the Russian army closing in, the horses were in danger of being slaughtered for food. No less a figure than General Patton ordered the rescue.

Letts is the author of a previous best seller about a horse, The Eighty-Dollar Champion (2011).

Check your holds. Several libraries show spikes on modest ordering.

The start of fall is not only signaled by Labor Day, but by the increased number of titles by well-known authors coming your way next week, from Margaret Atwood’s first graphic novel, Angel Catbird (Dark Horse Books; OverDrive Sample), to John le Carré’s memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (PRH/Viking; Penguin Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample), which NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani describes as more of “a collection of reminiscences” and continues that the section on his childhood, adapted from a longer New Yorker piece, is “the rawest, most emotional part of this book, and its psychological spine.”

In addition, the next Oprah pick arrives, breathtakingly quickly after her selection of Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. The title has not been announced yet, so speculation has been rife with heavy odds on Glennon Doyle Melton’s Love Warrior (Macmillan/Flatiron; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample), even though it is a memoir and the Oprah pick is classified as fiction (red herring, perhaps?).

Another guess, quickly shot down by the author, is Jonathan Safran Foer’s next novel Here I Am (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample). A literary darling, you can expect to see it reviewed in all the major consumer book reviews, beginning with the L.A. Times, under the less than compelling headline, “With joyless prose about joyless people, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am is kitsch at best.”

It’s also a big week for the James Patterson Bookshops series, with four new titles being released. This is the third group of titles released in the series, and it’s become clear that all BookShots are not equal. Readers prefer those that continue established Patterson series, which this month’s titles do not. Two are in the erotic romance sub-series, BookShots Flames. Patterson is not the co-author on these titles, but supplies an introduction to each. Still, it’s amusing to see the Patterson name emblazoned in script across a typical romance cover.

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 9/5/16

Consumer Media Picks

The media continues to give props to the big literary debut released earlier this week, that we previewed last week, The Nix by Nathan Hill (PRH/Knopf; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

Entertainment Weekly gives it an A- in the new issue:

“Nathan Hill’s sad, funny, endlessly inventive debut feels like exactly the kind of novel Septembers are made for: 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, not homework.”

The New York Times kicked off the coverage with a profile of the author, comparing him to John Irving and then, cleverly asking Irving his opinion. He compares Hill to Dickens. Washington Post chief book critic, Ron Charles calls Hill a “major new comic novelist” and describes one of the book’s main characters as “a fire-breathing, anti-immigrant presidential candidate who may remind you of a certain reality-TV star with size anxiety.” NPR calls it, “A Vicious, Sprawling Satire With A Very Human Heart.”

Some libraries are showing heavy holds on modest ordering.

People magazine’s “Book of the Week” is a tribute to the late Nora Ephron by her friend Richard Cohen, She Made Me Laugh (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) calling it, “both complex and moving — and [Cohen’s] depiction of the literary and journalistic circles of the era isn’t stingy on the gossip, either. Nora would be pleased.”

People‘s other two picks this week are also peer picks, Gayle Forman’s first title for adults and the debut, Mischling (see below).

Peer Picks

Two LibraryReads titles appear next week, including the #1 librarian pick for September:

Leave Me, Gayle Forman (Workman/Algonquin Books; OverDrive Sample).

“Aren’t there days when you just want to leave it all behind? After a life threatening event, that’s exactly what Maribeth Klein does. Maribeth, wife, mom of 4-year old twins, and editor of a glossy magazine is told to rest. Sure! The choice she makes is not the one for most, but following Maribeth on this journey is compelling nonetheless. Fast paced narrative and terrific writing make this one hard to put down. Recommended!” — Carol Ann Tack, Merrick Library, Merrick, NY

Additional Buzz: It is also an Indie Next selection for September and is a People pick this week.

The Masked City: An Invisible Library Novel, Genevieve Cogman (PRH/Roc; OverDrive Sample).

“A mysterious new Fae couple is causing Irene and crew major grief in this second installment of the Invisible Library series. After getting a book, Irene and Kai get attacked by a group of werewolves. Irene plans to go to the Library, turn in the book, and find information on the newcomers while Kai will go to Vale’s house. Kai is attacked and taken away. To get to the chaos filled world where Kai is held, Irene has to get help from Silver and fight to not be overrun by chaos and the Fae. I like this series because Irene is a smart, tough, stubborn, and loyal librarian who has survived many crazy, dangerous, and interesting worlds and people.” — Julie Horton, Greenwood County Library, Greenwood, SC

Additional Buzz: The author’s first book was the subject of one of our PRH EarlyReads chats.

Eight Indie Next picks flood shelves this week:

The Risen, Ron Rash (HC/Ecco; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

“The most overused cliché in the book business is ‘page-turner,’ so I will ask indulgence when I declare that The Risen by Ron Rash is a page-turner in the truest sense of the phrase. The Risen explores a young boy’s coming of age, sibling rivalry, a decades-old mystery, and extreme life choices. It is an exciting read for all who appreciate literature at its finest.” —Jake Reiss, Alabama Booksmith, Birmingham, AL

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

“Sisters Stasha and Pearl are accustomed to the imaginative interior life they share as twins, but in Josef Mengele’s ‘Zoo’ at Auschwitz they must find refuge in that life in order to survive. Readers descend into the violence and despair of the Holocaust as experienced through the eyes of the twins but are protected by an innocence that is also urbane and by a sardonic playfulness that does not shy from horrors but transforms them into fortitude and resilience. Konar has achieved the unlikely — Mischling simultaneously haunts and inspires.” —Kelly Pickerill, Lemuria Bookstore, Jackson, MS

Additional Buzz: A People pick this week, it earned starred reviews from Booklist, LJ, and PW, which calls it “a brutally beautiful novel.”

Razor Girl, Carl Hiaasen (PRH/Knopf; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“Welcome back to Southern Florida! In the land of flimflam artists, illegal substances, and scantily clad women, disgraced detective Andrew Yancy is just trying to get his job back. Merry Mansfield, master of the car crash scam, insinuates herself into Yancy’s life with brazen confidence. As it turns out, he needs her more than he could ever anticipate. Reality TV stars, redneck kidnappers, mobsters, and corrupt developers cross paths throughout this novel in hilarious, nonstop action. Hiassen is at the top of his game with quirky characters, rapid-fire banter, and Wodehouse-like plotting.” —Cindy Pauldine, the river’s end bookstore, Oswego, NY

Additional Buzz: Reviewed in The Washington Post as a “raucous new novel.” More reviews are coming, from NPR and the NYT‘s Janet Maslin.

The Fortunes, Peter Ho Davies (HMH; OverDrive Sample).

“At a time of talk about building walls and isolationism, Davies offers a look at American history through the lives of a group of people who have helped to forge this nation — Chinese-Americans. Davies presents characters for whom the American dream is as elusive or as real as it would be to any others. Set in the California Gold Rush, 1930s Hollywood, and the present day, Davies’ tale is artfully told with passion and conviction, and readers will empathize fully with each generation of ‘outsiders.’” —Jessie Martin, Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor, MI

Additional Buzz: On several Fall Reading lists, including New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, the Amazon Editor’s, and BuzzFeed.

Lady Cop Makes Trouble, Amy Stewart (HMH; OverDrive Sample).

“Stewart’s follow-up to Girl Waits With Gun is equally fascinating. Based on the life of Constance Kopp, the first female deputy sheriff in New Jersey, this tale takes readers from rural New Jersey to the mean streets of New York City in 1915. With grit, smarts, and utter determination, Constance tracks a convict who escaped her custody. Despite the astounding restrictions on a woman’s life in the early 20th century, Constance takes every risk to capture her suspect. Complemented by the historical notes that Stewart provides, Lady Cop is both informative and loads of fun.” —Kathy Kirby, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR

A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles (PRH/Viking; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“Through Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov’s ordinary encounters and activities within the bounds of the four walls of post-revolutionary Moscow’s Metropol Hotel, where he is under house arrest, Towles deftly guides readers across a century of Russian history, from the Bolshevik uprising to the dawn of the nuclear age under Krushchev. Grandiloquent language and drama reminiscent of Tolstoy gradually give way to action and tradecraft suggestive of le Carré in this lovely and entertaining tale of one man’s determination to maintain his dignity and passion for life, even after being stripped of his title, belongings, and freedom. Reading A Gentleman in Moscow is pure pleasure!” —Becky Dayton, The Vermont Book Shop, Middlebury, VT

Additional Buzz: On the Fall Reading lists of Entertainment Weekly and the Amazon Editor’s. LJ and Kirkus offer starred reviews with Kirkus writing “A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles’ stylish debut, Rules of Civility.”

Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France, Craig Carlson (Sourcebooks; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“Pancakes and Paris make for a winning combination in this charming memoir. Readers will cheer for Carlson as he follows his dream of opening a restaurant in nother country. He faces many challenges, but perseveres until he reaches his goal. Thanks to Carlson it is now possible to get hearty pancakes and other treats at Breakfast in America, the first American-style diner in Paris. This is a perfect read for armchair travelers or for Francophiles planning their next trip to the City of Lights.” —Elizabeth Merritt, Titcomb’s Bookshop, East Sandwich, MA

The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood, Belle Boggs (Macmillan/Graywolf Press; OverDrive Sample).

“Boggs tackles a variety of challenging topics throughout this cohesive collection of essays. With a knowledgeable, considerate, and honest mind, Boggs is somehow able to transform the clinical and sedate language of infertility treatments into a beautiful song of hope and transformation. The metaphors Boggs finds for her travails sing, and the patient quality of her narration stuns. The candidness of her voice, combined with her ability to find the perfect words to sum up data, studies, statistics, and personal experience, make The Art of Waiting a gift for all readers.” —John Francisconi, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT

Additional Buzz: It is a BuzzFeed Fall Reading pick.

Tie-ins

Five new tie-ins appear this week, setting up the fall film season.

Goat: Film opens on 9/23/16. Directed by Andrew Neel, starring Ben Schnetzer, Nick Jonas, and Gus Halper.

Tie-in: Goat (Movie Tie-in Edition): A Memoir, Brad Land (PRH/RH; OverDrive Sample).

The Queen of Katwe: Film opens on 9/23/16 in limited release, nationwide the following week. Directed by Mira Nair, starring Lupita Nyong’o, David Oyelowo, Madina Nalwanga, and Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine.

Tie-in: The Queen of Katwe: One Girl’s Triumphant Path to Becoming a Chess Champion, Tim Crothers (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio; HighBridge Audio; OverDrive Sample).

See our additional coverage here and here.

Poldark, Season 2: Beginning September 25th on PBS Masterpiece and starring Aidan Turner, Eleanor Tomlinson, and Heida Reed.

Tie-in: The World of Poldark, Emma Marriott (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; OverDrive Sample). (NOTE: The series is based on the Poldark novels by Winston Graham.)

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back: Film opens on 10/21/2016. Directed by Edward Zwick, starring Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, and Robert Knepper.

Tie-in: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Movie Tie-in Edition), Lee Child (PRH/Bantam; RH Audio/BOT; also in Mass Market; OverDrive Sample).

See our additional coverage here, here, and here.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk: Film opens on 11/11/16. Directed by Ang Lee, starring Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin, and Chris Tucker.

Tie-in: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain (HC/Ecco; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

See our additional coverage here and here.

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

Opening today is the film adaptation, The Light Between Oceans. When we previewed it last week, there were few reviews. They are pouring in now, and it’s getting high marks for gorgeous cinematography, but less for plausibility, or even the ability to jerk tears (see Entertainment Weekly‘s review, as well as the New Yorker‘s). In terms of box office, The Hollywood Reporter doesn’t hold out great hopes, especially since Labor Day weekend tends to be quiet in theaters. The book, however, is already benefitting from the publicity, zooming up USA Today‘s best seller list to #3, its highest position on that list to date.

The big film opening next week is Sully, based on Highest Duty by Chesley Sullenberger (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2009), a memoir by the man who piloted an airplane to safety on New York’s Hudson River after its engines were disabled by a bird strike.

Directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Tom Hanks in the lead role, with Laura Linney as his wife, it opens on Friday, Sept. 9.

Tie-in: Sully : My Search for What Really Matters, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, III, Jeffrey Zaslow (HarperCollins/Morrow,  August 30, 2016). It is currently at #5 on the NYT paperback nonfiction best seller list, two weeks.

Queen Sugar begins airing on Oprah’s OWN channel Sept. 6 and 7th in a two-night premiere.

The series is the number one People pick for the week, called an “unusually fine, seductive new series.” Entertainment Weekly gives it a B, recommending it for people tired of the usual melodramas, because it offers “a refreshing point of difference: a family saga on which loved ones labor together for individual and shared redemption.”

The series is based on the novel Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile (Penguin/Pamela Dorman; Thorndike; 2014; see our chat with the author just prior to the book’s publication). As we wrote earlier, the story takes place in Southern Louisiana and features three sibling who inherit their father’s sugar cane plantation. It was selected as a book of the week by Oprah’s O magazine, saying, “In Queen Sugar, two bulwarks of American literature—Southern fiction and the transformational journey—are given a fresh take by talented first-time novelist Natalie Baszile.”

The two-part premiere is directed by Ava DuVernay (Selma). Upcoming episodes have all been assigned to female directors, many of them first-timers. The series has already been renewed for a second season.

Quarry begins playing on Cinemax on Sept. 9th. As we wrote earlier, it is a dark and moody adaptation of Max Allan Collins’s noir 1970s era series about a hit man. The eight-episode run will star Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus) as a Marine who comes home to Memphis after the Vietnam War and gets caught in a world of violence and corruption.

Tie-in, Quarry – TV Tie-In Edition, Max Allan Collins (RH/Hard Case Crime, Sept. 27; OverDrive Sample). Publisher Hard Case Crime has recently re-issued the original Quarry novels with their signature retro covers. The latest is Quarry in the Black (RH/Hard Case Crime; October 4, 2016).

Churchill’s Secret begins playing on PBS’s Masterpiece on Sept. 11th. It stars Michael Gambon (Harry Potter, The Casual Vacancy) as Winston Churchill as he suffers a debilitating stroke.

The series is based on a true story and is directed by Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited), Romola Garai (The Hour), and Lindsay Duncan (Sherlock), along with many others PBS fans will recognize.

It is an adaptation of Jonathan Smith’s KBO: The Churchill Secret (Little/Brown, U.K., not published in the US.)

Ithaca opens in limited release on the 9th, after a poorly reviewed run at film festivals. Giving a flavor for the critics take, The Hollywood Reporter said it was “almost a casebook study of how not to transpose “literature” to film … heartfelt yet sodden … wordy and static.”

Given its big name star line up, it might have expected a better reception. It is directed by Meg Ryan, written by Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers) and based on by William Saroyan’s 1943 novel The Human Comedy. It stars Alex Neustaedter, Jack Quaid, Meg Ryan, Sam Shepard, Hamish Linklater and Tom Hanks.

There was no tie-in.

Just two weeks after sending a memo to staff denying a NY Post story that the paper is in the midst of weighing cutbacks that include “ending the print edition of its Sunday magazine, folding the Metro section, making the weekly book review section online-only and leasing out space in its Midtown headquarters,” comes news that the story was at least partially true.

An Aug. 2 email to NY Times staff stated that the Metro section is cutting back and will no longer review restaurants, theaters and cultural events beyond the city borders. The story is reported by what may seem an odd source, the Hollywood news site, Deadline. Their concern is focused on the impact on regional theaters. Deadline quotes from the memo:

… we will publish our final reviews and features in the New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island and Connecticut editions on August 28. The Metropolitan section as it appears in New York City will still be published and circulated throughout the region, but it will no longer include zoned content.

The story notes, “The move also has heightened anxieties on the Times culture desk that reassignments or cuts in the department’s full-time staff are imminent.”

The move also raises concerns about whether more changes will come to country’s last remaining standalone newspaper book section, beyond the recent announcement that all book coverage, including daily and Sunday, is now consolidated under Pamela Paul,

Congressman John Lewis appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night and talked about his graphic memoir March, set for release next week as a three-volume boxed set, March (Trilogy Slipcase Set), John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions).

He told Colbert that the ten-cent comic Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story served for him as a road map into the Civil Rights movement.

He hopes that March will become the road map for another generation, making history and civil action plain and real, so it “jumps off the pages and sings and dances” for readers.

The pair also talked about the sit-in recently held in Congress to draw attention to gun violence and how it is an example of finding a way to get into what Congressman Lewis calls “good and necessary trouble.”

Be sure to watch the segment to the end — it’s not to be missed.

SFF fans have much to look forward as the new publishing season gets underway. io9 surveys the field with “All the New Scifi and Fantasy Books You Absolutely Must Read This Fall.”

The list gets of to a fast start with the Sept. 6 release of MJ-12: Inception, Michael J Martinez (Skyhorse/Night Shade Books).

The author tells io9 that the first in an expected trilogy is “a paranormal Cold War spy-fi thriller. Think Bond meets X-Men during the height of the Cold War.”

Death’s End, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Macmillan/Tor Books) also arriving in September, marks the final volume in the award-winning trilogy. The first book, The Three-Body Problem won the Hugo and was a finalist for the Nebula and Locus awards. The second novel is The Dark Forest.

Liu’s own next book, The Wall of Storms (S&S/Saga; S&S Audio) pubs in early October and is the sequel to the highly regarded Grace of Kings.

Crosstalk, Connie Willis (PRH/Del Rey) hits shelves in October. io9 writes “A pair of lovebirds who both work in tech decide to undergo a simple medical procedure to increase empathy between them.” Fans of Willis know what follows will be far more complicated than that.

A number of other works, including spin-offs of favorite story lines from the classics Dune and Star Wars, complete the list, which a;sp includes nonfiction and anthologies.

See our catalog for a running list of the Fall picks as they are announced.