EarlyWord

Just last month, on the launch day for the play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,  J.K. Rowling told the press that the story was now complete, saying, Potter “goes on a very big journey during these two plays and then, yeah, I think we’re done.”

In what seems like a reversal, she announced yesterday that she is returning to the wizarding world with a series of spin-off ebooks featuring characters from Hogwarts.

As The Guardian reports, starting on September 6, the tales will appear as short e-only editions, “Called Pottermore Presents, the series is a collection of Rowling’s writing for Pottermore.com, as well as new stories about characters including Potter’s potions master Horace Slughorn, Hogwarts headteacher Professor Minerva McGonagall and Ministry of Magic bureaucrat Dolores Umbridge.”

Pottermore calls them “a series of bite-sized eBooks that dig deep into the Harry Potter stories, with titbits taken from Pottermore’s archives and original writing from J.K. Rowling. The series offers Harry Potter fans added insights into the stories, settings and characters and were all lovingly curated by Pottermore.”

Variety reports they will cost three dollars and provides a brief summary of each title, including the news that the third title will feature “new information on McGonagall’s role in the second wizarding war.”

Pottermore further teases, “for those who want to quench their thirst for more knowledge about the wizarding world, such as why the Black family bestow such odd names to their children, how a witch or wizard becomes a portrait, or what J.K. Rowling really thinks about Professor Umbridge, step right this way to find out.”

The titles are available for pre-order on Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes but are not yet showing in library vendor systems.

Below is the bibliographic data from Kobo:

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies, J.K. Rowling (Pottermore, September 2016; ISBN 9781781106280)

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists, J.K. Rowling (Pottermore, September 2016; ISBN 9781781106297)

Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide, J.K. Rowling (Pottermore, September 2016; ISBN 9781781106273)

Ted Chiang has won a remarkable number of major science fiction awards. That is even more remarkable when you realize that his output has been relatively small, just 15 short stories, most of them originally published in magazines. A collected edition of some of his short stories, Stories Of Your Life And Others (originally published in 2002 by Macmillan/Tor; re-released by PRH/Vintage in 2016; OverDrive Sample), is called by the publisher “the most awarded collection in history” even though, technically, it’s not the collection that was awarded, but the stories in it.

In a recent interview in Electric Literature, Chiang’s work is described as managing to “capture the human drama behind philosophical questions, in clear and spare prose that seduces with its simplicity.”

That doesn’t sound like the type of science fiction that generally makes it to the big screen (in an interview last year, he dismissed movies like Star Wars as “adventure stories dressed up with lasers.”)

Nevertheless, a $50 million dollar adaptation of the title story from the collection,  Story of Your Life is headed to screens this fall, with the title Arrival.

Chiang says that, after he first got the idea to write about a woman trying to communicate with aliens and having her own life profoundly changed as a result, he studied linguistics for four years as preparation.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, the movie will arrive in theaters on November 11. The first trailer was just released.

Tie-in:
Arrival (Stories of Your Life MTI)
Ted Chiang
PRH/Vintage: October 25, 2016

Trevor Noah took over hosting The Daily Show from Jon Stewart last year. His predecessor was beloved by publishers for the many writers he featured on the show and for the resulting bumps in sales of their books.

Noah has not followed in those footsteps. While he has featured writers, they have been the usual late show mix of well known comedians and politicians who just happen to have written books and those appearances have rarely produced noticeable sales bumps.

Last night’s guest was different. Noah interviewed novelist Yaa Gyasi and The Daily Show bump returned, sending her debut Homegoing (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample) shooting up the Amazon sales ranks, moving from #315 to #62.

Noah is passionate about the book, calling  it “one of the most fantastic books I have read in a long time,” continuing that it is a “powerful … beautiful story … hopeful while at the same time being very realistic … you cry and you laugh as you are reading it.”

Gyasi says her visit to a slave fort in Ghana spurred her to write about the “diaspora as a family … if you go back far enough in time the thing that connects us … both African immigrants and African Americans … is the fact that we were all related … I wanted to bring it down to that most elemental level … to connect the family for all of us.” She also says that the story of slavery cannot be told without including the role played by African slave traders.

Noah closed the brief interview by reminding the audience that Gyasi’s novel is being hailed as “the new Roots of our generation” and saying he expects to be hearing more from her.

The million-dollar debut has been a hot title since before it even hit shelves, getting nods from librarians and booksellers, making multiple Summer reading lists, and Entertainment Weekly‘s list of “Best Fiction of 2016 So Far..” It spent a few weeks on the NYT bestseller extend list (getting as high as #15) but did best on the American Booksellers Association list which measures indie bookstore sales, reaching #5.

Circulation continues to be strong across libraries we checked with high hold numbers and turnover rates.

A circuitous publishing path has brought new attention to a frontier memoir, recounting the hardscrabble life in Arkansas and on the Mississippi Delta during the late 1800s and early 1900s, Trials of the Earth: The True Story of a Pioneer Woman, Mary Mann Hamilton (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Featured on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, the book is rising on Amazon, leapfrogging over a thousand other books to move from #1,170 to #76.

Hamilton’s life story first saw the light of day when a neighbor urged her to enter her journal into a writing competition sponsored by publisher Little, Brown in 1933. It did not win and languished in a box kept under a bed, until the University Press of Mississippi published it to little fanfare in 1992 (although it was reviewed by the New York Times). Coming full circle, Little, Brown, has just  published a new edition.

NPR reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls it a “standout,” with a “blunt voice” that makes vivid the world Hamilton occupied. Highlighting a racist passage, she warns some of the “sections are ugly and tough to read” but that ultimately the book is rewarding, revealing the wildness of that world and “just how easy it was to vanish in an earlier America.”

USA Today gave it three out of four stars, writing it “underscores the huge power of unvarnished storytelling.”

The Chicago Tribune writes vividly about the “backbreaking labor” and wilderness Hamilton existed within, offering a picture of a woman tough as nails. In an especially intense example: soon after Hamilton gave birth, her home was cut off by flood waters, she “shelters with her daughter and three-month-old baby on a tree stump while bears swim past in the flood, not knowing whether her husband is dead or alive.”

Similar to the unexpected success of another frontier memoir, Pioneer Girl, holds are growing and inventory is low. In libraries we checked some systems are showing hold figures as high as 6:1.

If you love real estate porn combined with the story of an author’s unexpected success, check out the cover story from Sunday’s NYT Real Estate section. In it, Christina Baker Kline writes that she had nearly given up on her dream to buy a house where her father and three siblings has been acquiring property, on Mount Desert Island in Maine.

All that changed when her novel Orphan Train, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2014) which is partially set on Mount Desert Island, became a word-of-mouth bestseller.

The publication of Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe, Sept. 6) by Margot Lee Shetterly is heralded by not just a book trailer, but a full-fledged movie trailer for a major release, coming in January. As a result, the book jumped up Amazon’s sales rankings.

One of our GalleyChat titles for July, it was signed up back in 2015. Director Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) was so taken with the script that he dropped out of the running to direct a Spiderman movie in favor of this one.

It stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe as a group of African American women who worked at NASA in Langley, Virginia on the mission that sent John Glenn into space in 1962. Also in the cast are Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge and Glen Powell.

The book will be released in paperback in December. Two young readers editions, for ages 8 to 12,  are also scheduled, in hardcover and paperback.

Earlier this year, another book on a different group of women in the space program was released, Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars, Nathalia Holt (Hachette/Little, Brown; OverDrive Sample). Also called ‘human computers” like the women in Langley, they worked in the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California in the 1960’s. One of them, Janez Lawson, was African American.

A trailer has been released for the movie adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s middle grade novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins.

The star of The Book Thief, Sophie Nelisse plays the title role, along with Glenn Close, Kathy Bates and Octavia Spencer. It is scheduled for release on October 7th.

The book was a Newbery Honor winner in 1979, the year after Paterson won the Newbery Medal for Bridge to Terabithia.(also made into a film, which Variety notes, grossed more than $200 million worldwide). In 1981, she won the Newbery again for Jacob I Have Loved.

A new edition (second right, above) was released in hardcover and  paperback in January, featuring a burst that reads “Read it Before You See It,”

One of the new movies opening this week is a blast from the past, Ben-Hur.

NY Magazine writes that the book it is based on “was a best seller on release, surpassing Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the most-purchased American book in history, and holding that record for an astounding 56 years (Gone With the Wind unseated it).”

Forbes reviews the re-make, saying “the pitch here is basically 300: Rise of an Empire … with cheaper looking costumes, the same CGI and editing, and Morgan Freeman, whose performance as God in Bruce Almighty and as a divine narrator in so many other things helps subtly sell the godly aspect.”

The biblical epic is executive produced by Roma Downey (Touched by an Angel) and husband Mark Burnett (Shark Tank, The Apprentice). It stars Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman and opens Aug. 19.

There is a tie-in: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Carol Wallace (Tyndale House; also in trade paperback and in Spanish).

War Dogs opens on August 19 and stars Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Bradley Cooper, Ana de Armas and J. B. Blanc.

As we wrote earlier, it is based on a nonfiction account originally titled Arms and the Dudes. It tells the unlikely story about winning a $300 million US government contract to supply weapons for the war in Afghanistan.

A tie-in came out in late July: War Dogs: The True Story of How Three Stoners From Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History, Guy Lawson (S&S; OverDrive Sample; also in mass market).

Also heading to theaters is Kubo and the Two Strings by Oregon’s stop-motion animation house Laika (the operation behind Coraline and The Boxtrolls).

As we wrote when the preview lit up the Internet, the the fantasy-adventure is set in Japan and features the voices of Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, George Takei and Art Parkinson (Game of Thrones). It debuts in theaters on 8/19/16.

There are multiple tie-ins:

Kubo and the Two Strings: Meet Kubo, R. R. Busse (Hachette/Little, Brown YR; pbk.; Passport to Reading, Level 2, Ages 4 to 8).

Kubo and the Two Strings: The Junior Novel, Sadie Chesterfield (Hachette/Little, Brown YR.; pbk.; Ages 4 to 8).

The Art of Kubo and the Two Strings, Emily Haynes, Travis Knight (Chronicle).

Opening in limited release is A Tale of Love and Darkness, Natalie Portman’s directorial debut (she acts in the film as well). It is based on the memoir of the same name by Israeli author Amos Oz.

Variety calls the film “well-meaning but dreary,” but Esquire headlines it as “the Most Revolutionary Jewish Movie Since Schindler’s List” and goes on to say it “is urgently relevant and unlike anything else.”

There is no tie-in but the book is available in paperback: A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz, translated by Nicholas de Lange (HMH/Mariner Books).

From the President to RWA’s Librarian of the Year, people are on board for Oprah’s latest pick, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio; BOT). It debuts at #4 on the NYT Best Seller Hardback Fiction list, is the #6 best selling book on Amazon, and is #10 on the USA Today best- seller list.

Reviewers were caught off guard when the book, originally scheduled for publication in September, was published early due to the Oprah pick. A few newspapers managed to rush their reviews into print including The Washington Post and The New York Times. Since then there have been many more assessments, all of them glowing.

The book is featured on the cover of this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review. Author Juan Gabriel Vásquez  calls it “striking and imaginative … carefully built and stunningly daring; it is also, both in expected and unexpected ways, dense, substantial and important.” Whitehead himself is interviewed by NYT BR editor Pamela Paul on the weekly podcast.

NPR‘s book reviewer goes so far as to say, “With this novel, Colson Whitehead proves that he belongs on any short list of America’s greatest authors — his talent and range are beyond impressive and impossible to ignore. The Underground Railroad is an American masterpiece.”

Laura Miller of Slate wonders “How does an ironist write about slavery?” and makes some unexpected comparisons, “The Underground Railroad makes it clear that Whitehead’s omnivorous cultural appetite has devoured narratives of every variety and made them his own. This novel, like much of his work, has the flavor of [Ralph] Ellison’s skepticism—but it’s also redolent of the propulsive, quasi-allegorical quest plot of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. Think of The Underground Railroad as the novel where the spirits of two great American storytellers meet in a third.”

USA Today gives it 3.5 out of four stars, saying that the novel is “masterful, urgent,” full of “immense vitality,” and “one of the finest novels written about our country’s still unabsolved original sin.” WSJ writes “on every page of The Underground Railroad is evidence of a mature writer in full control of his talent and ambition.” People calls it “Tense, graphic, uplifting and informed, this is a story to share and remember.”

As for the President and the librarian, Mr. Obama includes the book on his just released Summer Reading List while Robin Bradford, Collection Development Librarian for Timberland Regional Library and the 2016 RWA Librarian of the Year, prophetically said during a podcast from the romance book site, Smart Bitches/Trashy Books, recorded before Oprah made her pick, “everyone will be talking about it when it comes out, and you’ll hear so much about it that you’ll think, it can’t be that good, [but] it’s one of those life-changing books …  I can’t shut up about that book.”

It’s Jacqueline Woodson Week. Review attention has already begun for her anticipated adult novel, Another Brooklyn (HarperCollins/Amisted; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), arriving on Tuesday (CORRECTION: It actually arrived LAST Tuesday, as Elaine points out in the comments, but we are still declaring this her week, as the reviews continue to pour in). It’s People magazine’s “Book of the Week,” described as “a lovely, mournful portrait of a sensitive girl growing up, forging life-sustaining friendships and eventually finding her way.” The L.A. Times calls it “a powerful adult tale of girlhood friendships.” The author was interviewed on NPR’s All Thing Considered this week.

It is also the #1 Indie Next Pick for August:

“National Book Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson has crafted a beautiful, heart-wrenching novel of a young girl’s coming-of-age in Brooklyn. Effortlessly weaving poetic prose, Woodson tells the story of the relationships young women form, their yearning to belong, and the bonds that are created — and broken. Brooklyn itself is a vivid character in this tale — a place at first harsh, but one that becomes home and plays a role in each character’s future. Woodson is one of the most skilled storytellers of our day, and I continue to love and devour each masterpiece she creates!”  —Nicole Yasinsky, The Booksellers at Laurelwood, Memphis, TN

In addition to the books highlighted here, new titles are coming from holds leaders  Janet Ivanovich, Lisa Scottoline, mystery favorite Michael  Koryta and  an important new name in science fiction, N K, Jemisin,  For those, and several other notable titles arriving next week, with ordering information and alternate formats, check on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Aug. 15, 2016

Media Focus

The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy Schumer,  (S&S Gallery Books; S&S Audio)

Schumer’s memoir has received advance attention. The media focus will continue news week:
8/16 ABC Good Morning America
8/17 NPR Morning Edition
8/17 CBS This Morning
8/22 CBS Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Consumer Media Picks

The Last Days of Night, Graham Moore, (Random House; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample). 

At #4 on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Must List — The Top 10 Things We Love this Week,” this novel is a thriller about an unlikely subject, Thomas Edison’s lawsuit against George Westinghouse about his light bulb patent. Moore is well-known to the entertainment media as the winner of the Academy Award for the screenplay of The Imitation Game, starring Eddie Redmayne [CORRECTION: the star was Benedict Cumberbatch, as our alert readers point out in the comments]. The director of that movie will begin shooting an adaptation of The Last Days of Night in January, with Redmayne starring reports Deadline.

The Wall Street Journal features the book today, with background on Moore’s research. The author is set to appear on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show next week.

All at Sea, Decca Aitkenhead (PRH/Nan A. Talese).

A People magazine pick, this is a  memoir by a journalist whose partner, Tony, died while saving their 4-year-old son from drowning. People calls it a “heart-wrenching tale of race, unlikely love (Tony was a former criminal) and how grief changes everything. It’s unforgettable.”

Cooking for Picasso, Camille Aubray (PRH/Ballantine; RH Large Print; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

Published last week, this book is also a People pick, a novel about a woman who learns that her grandmother did what the book’s title says. She then heads to the South of France to look for the painting the artist supposedly gave her gran. Naturally, she falls in love along the way. People calls it “delicious, atmospheric.”

The Golden Age, Joan London, (Europa Editions, Trade Paperback)

A GalleyChat favorite, this is the lead title for the season from Europa Editions, a publisher that has opened American eyes to some of the best writing from other countries and created a best selling phenomenon here with Elena Ferrante’s novels.

Both pre-pub sources that reviewed The Golden Age gave it a star.  Set in an Australian children’s polio clinic after WW II, “Every character, however minor, comes to life in these pages … London is a virtuoso.” writes Kirkus.

Peer Picks

In addition to the #1 Indie Next pick, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn, covered above, 3 more picks are being published this week, two from the September list and one from the August list.

A House Without Windows, Nadia Hashimi (HC/William Morrow; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

“Hashimi sets her layered and suspenseful novel at the crossroads of tradition and modernity in present-day Afghanistan. Her nuanced and well-paced tale tells the story of Zeba, who is accused of murdering her husband. In the Chil Mahtab prison, where Zeba awaits her trial and sentencing, she comes to know a colorful cast of female inmates, many of whom are ordinary women who have been snared in various traps of family honor and have been cast away by their families and by society. This is a compassionately written and moving page-turner.” —Marya Johnston, Out West Books, Grand Junction, CO

The Gentleman, Forrest Leo (PRH/Penguin).

“Fast-paced, funny, and extremely enjoyable, The Gentleman has fantastic elements and intriguing characters tied together with smart dialogue and timing reminiscent of a Baz Luhrman film. Badly behaved Victorian ladies, indolent poets, an exasperated editor, intrepid British adventurers, steampunk inventors, omniscient butlers, a genteel Devil, and a number of cunning plans combine to make this debut novel exciting and amusing.” —Jennifer Richter, Inkwood Books, Haddonfield, NJ

Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here, Angela Palm (Macmillan/Graywolf Press; OverDrive Sample).

“Haunting and surprising yet immediately relatable, Palm’s striking memoir sinks its roots deep into readers and holds fast. Everything ordinary, Palm reveals, is extraordinary — tragic, profound, amusing, brutal — when examined up close. In reflecting on her own formative years, growing up ‘between points on the map’ in small-town Indiana, Palm paints a measured, unforgettable portrait of the forces that break us free of our origins and those that inevitably call us back.” —Sam Kaas, Village Books, Bellingham, WA

It is also a summer reading pick by the Chicago Tribune: “A memoir of memory, place and burgeoning personhood [recalling] her childhood on the banks of a river in rural Indiana and the next-door boy, once the secret object of her affection, now serving life in prison for a brutal murder.”

Tie-ins

There are no tie-ins this week. For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our listing of tie-ins.

Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run (S&S; S&S Audio; Sept. 27), is rising on Amazon, jumping to #178, up from #525. The leap coincides with the release of a music filled book trailer:

The 500+ page book is expected to be a candid memoir covering the span of the musician’s career. As the NY Daily News reported when the book deal went public, Springsteen said “Writing about yourself is a funny business … But in a project like this, the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind. In these pages, I’ve tried to do this.”

RollingStone, quoting from publisher statements, reports “the book will chronicle Springsteen’s life from growing up in Freehold, New Jersey amid ‘poetry, danger and darkness’ and how it inspired him to become a musician.”

The book is timed to a new companion album release, Chapter & Verse. It will include five previously unreleased tracks. Springsteen’s website says the musician picked the songs on the album “to reflect the themes and sections” of his memoir: “The compilation begins with two tracks from The Castiles, featuring a teenaged Springsteen on guitar and vocals, and ends with the title track from 2012’s ‘Wrecking Ball.’”

The album will be released four days before the memoir.

UPDATE: Please note this, from the comments section, which gives some hope:

The story in the Post was completely debunked by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., The New York Times Publisher. In an email to staff today he wrote: “…The New York Times Magazine and our Sunday Book Review are two of the most successful and popular products in our very powerful arsenal. We will not cease producing them in print.”

Also, the New York Times‘s David Leonhardt tweeted the following today:

In email to newsroom, Arthur Sulzberger debunks bizarre NY Post story claiming @nytimes may shut Book Review, Mag, Metro. Crazy talk.

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) August 12, 2016

At the end of June, Politico said that Leonhardt was “overseeing a sweeping strategic review by a team of seven Times  journalists known as the 2020 Group.” They quoted him saying, “The Times has changed enormously in the past few years, but it still hasn’t changed enough,”

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In another gloomy indicator of the lack of value newspaper owners place on book review sections, the New York Post reports that the NYT may discontinue the print edition of the Sunday Book Review, publishing it online only.

It is just one of several possible cost-cutting measures under discussion. Others include ending the print edition of the Sunday magazine and folding the Metro section.

The NY Post reports that the potential cuts are in response to a fall in print advertising and the continued shift of readers to digital sources. Back in April, the paper reported on the financial troubles of their much larger rival (but did not mention the Book Review as being under scrutiny), causing Vanity Fair to take a dim view of the story and NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet to dismiss it on NPR as nothing more than “cheap guess work.”

However, Vanity Fair admitted in an update to their story, that “A portion of the Post‘s report was validated … as the Times said it was closing its print production and editing operations in its Paris bureau … About 70 staff members will be laid off or relocated.” The journalism site Poynter reported in July that “At least 49 journalists at The New York Times have accepted a standing buyout offer from newsroom leadership and will leave the paper in the coming months.”

If the changes to the Book Review do occur, they will follow a long sad march of such contractions.

In 2007 author Michael Connelly wrote about “The folly of downsizing book reviews” in a story in the LA Times, which had just merged its own standalone book review into the Sunday Opinion section. In his piece, Connelly recited the litany of shuttered or reduced book review sections at newspapers across the country, including the Raleigh News & Observer, the Dallas Morning News, the Orlando Sentinel, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Connelly was looking at an already reduced reviewing landscape. In 2001, Salon published a story titled “The amazing disappearing book review section.” At that time the San Francisco Chronicle was cutting back, following in the footsteps of many other papers, Salon noted “The Seattle Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Boston Globe have all put their papers on a diet by cutting back on book reviews.”

Since those stories were published, the Washington Post also abandoned its standalone review section, Book World.

The NYT Book Review currently publishes as a stand-alone pull out section each Sunday that includes dozens of reviews. If it becomes digital-only, it is likely, based on the experience of other such moves, that the number will decline.

This, of course, is part of a larger problem facing newspapers, a subject John Oliver addressed in his HBO show this week:

The #1 LibraryReads pick for September is Leave Me, Gayle Forman (Algonquin; Sept. 6).

“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: This is the YA author’s first adult novel. Her teen novel, If I Stay, was a NYT bestseller and adapted into a movie of the same name. Her adult turn is also an Indie Next pick for September.

Also on the list of ten titles are the following:

Commonwealth, Ann Patchett (Harper; Aug. 24).

“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: It is the #1 Indie Next pick for September and received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.

The Masked City: An Invisible Library Novel, Genevieve Cogman (PRH/Roc; Sept. 6).

“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: This is the second in a quickly published series and is by one of our PRH EarlyReads authors. The first book in the series was also selected as a librarian favorite.

Jacqueline Woodson’s first novel for adults in two decades, Another Brooklyn (HarperCollins/Amistad; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), is racing up the Amazon sales ranks, moving from #1,678 to #346.

The jump is a result of Woodson’s appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air, where she talks with host Terry Gross about poetry, sex, gender, homosexuality, and how growing up in a deeply religious family fueled her creativity and instilled in her a confidence that she had “a right to say what I believe in.”

USA Today reviewed the coming of age novel Tuesday, giving it 3 out of 4 stars and writing “it’s a story about adolescence as a feat of survival … alert to the confluences of dramas that a teen absorbs all at once, from racism to sexual abuse to the loss of family members.”

It is the #1 Indie Pick for August and earned rare all-star status from the four trade review journals. As we wrote earlier, it is on the majority of the summer reading lists and is sure to be heavily reviewed.

Read our chat with Tahereh, below.

Join us for the next live chat on September 14, 5 to 6 p.m., ET with Rachel Hawkins the author of the Rebel Belle series and the New York Times bestselling Hex Hall series, to discuss her upcoming book, Journey’s End.

To join the program, sign up here.