EarlyWord

Liane Moriarty’s latest Truly Madly Guilty (Macmillan/Flatiron; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample), which, as we reported, has been showing large holds lists, hits the USA Today‘s best seller list at #2, the highest debut Morality has ever achieved reports the paper, right behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The buzz has also powered her 2012 novel The Hypnotist’s Love Story onto the list at No. 47.

Her publisher is delighted, telling USA Today, “We are thrilled that Liane has debuted the highest she ever has … And if we can’t be No. 1, I can’t think of anyone we’d rather be behind than the boy wizard.”

According to USA Today, Moriarty first made their best-seller list in “2013 with The Husband’s Secret, entering the list at 32 and rising as high as No. 3. She followed that up the next year with a No. 3 debut for Big Little Lies in 2014. This year, her earlier books The Last Anniversary rose to No. 15 and What Alice Forgot peaked at No. 27.”

Reviews for Truly Madly, however, have been uneven. USA Today gave it 2.5 stars out of a possible 4, calling it “a summer bummer” and The New York Times gave it a less than stellar early review. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B, saying “it begins to feel like a very special, very frustrating episode of CSI: BBQ … [but] what sets Moriarty’s writing apart in the genre generally dismissed as chick lit has as much to do with her canny insights into human nature as her clever plotting … for Moriarty’s many fans, that should be truly, madly good enough.” The Washington Post has the most positive take.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine) has already landed on top of the USA Today best-seller list. Because of the list’s timing. it just one day of sales. Those midnight release parties must have been pretty effective.

But not all is rosy in the wizarding world. Even as the script-book debuted, Rowling announced that Harry Potter is now over, saying “I think we’re done … This is the next generation, you know. So, I’m thrilled to see it realised so beautifully but, no, Harry is done now.”

The script-book is also getting some push back after its initial glowing reviews. The NYT reports, “While many readers were ecstatic about the chance to have more material on Harry and his friends, others have faulted Ms. Rowling for licensing out her story and characters. Some fans have lashed out online, saying they feel they were duped and misled by the prominence of Ms. Rowling’s name on the cover.”

The Independent reports fans are having trouble with the format (despite being told in advance it was a script and not a novel and not by Rowling herself) and are vocal about their disappointment. The paper quotes some very unhappy Amazon readers, one who calls it “poorly planned fan fiction” and another who wrote “Rowling, you owe your fans a BOOK! I like to rename this Harry Potter and the great scam.”

For readers advisors looking for science fiction and fantasy titles for the end of summer, io9 offers a list of 15 suggestions, ranging from the return of blockbuster authors to worthy reads by lesser-known writers.

Sure to cause excitement are new books by Orson Scott Card and China Miéville.

Card joins with author Aaron Johnston on The Swarm: The Second Formic War (Volume 1) (Macmillan/Tor Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample), the first book in a new trilogy “set before the events of Ender’s Game [and after the events chronicled in the First Formic War series] … about the people of Earth’s ongoing battle in space with their dreaded alien opponents.”

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (PRH/Del Rey; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample)

relates what happens when “an eccentric French dissident takes on the occupying Nazis with a peculiar invention: a ‘surrealist bomb’.”

Other big new titles include the next in two popular series, the YA title  A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir (PRH/Razorbill; Listening Library)

and The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (Hachette/Orbit; OverDrive Sample).

Tahir “follows up her hit debut with a sequel that returns to the dystopian Martial Empire. It picks up right where An Ember in the Ashes left off, following slave Laia and soldier Elias as they continue the quest to break her brother out of prison.”

io9 says of Jemisin’s newest that “it continues the story of The Fifth Season—last year’s acclaimed tale of an apocalypse-prone planet teetering on the brink of yet another catastrophic climate change, and the complex characters who have a hand in its fate.”

The author of Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal, returns with a new story, Ghost Talkers (Macmillan/Tor; OverDrive Sample). io9 describes it as “Espionage meets spiritualism … Set during World War I, it follows the adventures of an American heiress serving in England as part of the Spirit Corps—a group of mediums who help the war effort by using their psychic powers.”

Also look for The Hike, Drew Magary (PRH/Viking; OverDrive Sample), a book that “blends folklore and video games [and is] about a suburbanite who gets lost while hiking through an unfamiliar forest—and soon, to his surprise, finds himself on an epic and magical quest.”

The full list of titles is here.

Influential book buyer, Costco’s  Pennie Clark Ianniciello, selects the memoir Please Enjoy Your Happiness, Paul Brinkley-Rogers (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) as her August pick.

Written decades after the events in his book took place, Brinkley-Rogers, now 77, takes readers back to the summer of 1959 when he was stationed as a young sailor in Japan. There he met an older woman and the two fell into a significant friendship centered on “poetry, literature and music, a postwar cultural exchange heightened by a dramatic subplot involving yakuza gangsters,” according to The Costco Connection.

In a sidebar Ianniciello says she was “completely knocked off my feet” while reading, finding the book a “beautifully moving testament to the power of love.”

The book is thus far flying largely under the radar and several of the libraries we checked have yet to place orders. However, Bustle did pick it as one of their 17 featured nonfiction books of August, saying it:

“is the moving account of how writer Paul Brinkley-Rogers fell in love with a Japanese woman in 1959 while stationed overseas and never managed to get over her. Through both his depiction of their relationship and the touching letters they wrote one another, the book shares pieces of her fascinating life and her country’s history and how she left her mark. The memoir is a beautiful love letter in itself.”

Keep your eye on it. While Pennie’s Picks are eclectic, ranging from already established hits such as Ron Chernow’s  Alexander Hamilton to lesser-known titles, her picks of the latter often result in their showing up on best seller list.

Jeffrey Toobin wrote the definitive book about one of the highest profile crime of the 1990’s, The Run of His Life, about O. J. Simpson. The popularity of two recent TV series on the case, one of which is based on that book, demonstrate there is a strong interest in revisiting such stories.

Going back even further in his latest book, Toobin takes a new look at the story of the 1974 kidnapping and arrest of Patty Hearst: American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst, (PRH/Doubleday; OverDrive Sample).

Following in the footsteps of Toobin’s O.J. title, Deadline Hollywood reports film rights were acquired prior to publication.

Libraries ordered the book modestly and holds are growing as a result of media attention. In an almost hour long conversation on NPR’s Fresh Air, Toobin talks to an enthralled Terry Gross about the case.

Hearst was the 19-year-old granddaughter of the famous newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst and while her case was a sensation at the time, Toobin found that nothing new had been written about the case in decades and decided to investigate it again.

Placing the story in its time, Toobin calls the period a “toxic, dangerous, scary time in America. … During the early and mid ’70s, there were 1,000 — 1,000!— bombings a year in the United States … [due to] a violent political culture.”

In this environment “the Symbionese Liberation Army, a small, armed revolutionary group with an incoherent ideology and unclear goals” kidnapped Hearst – at a point in her life where she was at “a particularly vulnerable and restless moment in her life … uniquely receptive to new influences.”

Against the standard story line that Hearst was brainwashed or suffering from Stockholm syndrome, Toobin argues that she “responded rationally to the circumstances she was confronted with at each stage of the process” and joined her kidnappers in their crimes.

Under her own power, says Toobin, she committed real harm, “She robbed three banks. She shot up a street in Los Angeles. She helped plant bombs in several places in northern California.”

Toobin says she “had multiple opportunities to escape over a year and a half. She went to the hospital for poison oak and she could’ve told the doctor, ‘Oh by the way, I’m Patty Hearst.’ She was caught in an inaccessible place while hiking and the forest rangers helped her out, and she could’ve said, ‘Oh by the way, I’m Patty Hearst.’ She didn’t escape because she didn’t want to escape.”

She was eventually captured and sent to prison for 7 years, but only served 22 months before President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence. President Bill Clinton pardoned her years later. Toobin calls both actions “the purest example of privilege on display that frankly I have ever seen in the criminal justice system.”

In her advanced NYT review, Janet Maslin writes, “As Mr. Toobin sees it, Patty — now Patricia again — was always an adroit opportunist, never a deep thinker, and remained an artful pragmatist under any circumstances.”

The Washington Post calls it “terrific” and “riveting” book, a “lurid crime story with its own toxic mix of race, class, celebrity and sex.”

CBS This Morning featured Toobin yesterday.

Why do some people get car sick? Why do humans exaggerate? Why are some people great at Jeopardy and awful balancing a checkbook?

Terry Gross explores those questions and much more during a Fresh Air interview with Dean Burnett, neuroscientist and author of Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To (Norton; OverDrive Sample).

The two talk about how the brain is highly illogical – if it were a computer it would alter the information stored within it to “suit your purposes, to suit your preferences … [its] egotistical … the brain tweaks and adjusts the information it stores to make you look better.”

Burnett also explains what happens with short-term memory: why you can walk into a room and forget why you went there in the first place. He calls it as fleeting as the “foam on your coffee.”

The  fascinating and oddly practical information clearly engages Gross, who applies what Burnett says to her own life.

He offers more tidbits in a Smithsonian interview, where he explains what causes us to feel like we are falling in our sleep only to jerk awake (“It could have something to do with our ancestors sleeping in trees”) and how Tylenol can soothe a broken heart – because the brain actually feels the loss of a romantic partner and acetaminophen effects that part of the brain.

Burnett writes the “Brain Flapping” column for The Guardian. One of its competitors, the Independent, calls his book “a wonderful introduction to neuroscience [that] deserves to be widely read.”

Libraries have bought fairly low but are seeing growing holds.

On the heels of the announcement that Ottessa Moshfegh’s literary thriller Eileen (PRH/Penguin) is a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, comes the news that screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson has been hired to adapt the novel for producer Scott Rudin.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Wilson has “become a go-to writer for adapting book-to-screen thrillers with provocative female heroines who are not always likable” ( the WSJ profiled her last year under the headline “Hollywood’s Go-To Scribe for Thrillers“). Having written the screenplay for The Girl on the Train, she was hired last year to adapt Maestra by L.S. Hilton (PRH/Putnam; BOT), another title that was sometimes compared to The Girl on the Train (Note: the cover for the latter, above, is the newly-released art for the tie-in).

Maestra is still in development. No stars or director have yet been named.

Rising on Amazon is The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward (S&S/Scribner). The jump coincides with a featured interview on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday.

National Book Award–winner Ward talks with host Audie Cornish about her new essay collection and how she and her fellow essayists included in the book respond to the current state of race in America. The collection brings James Baldwin’s 1963 seminal book, The Fire Next Time to the present day. Contributors include Edwidge Danticat, Claudia Rankine, Natasha Trethewey, Isabel Wilkerson, and Kevin Young.

Ward says that few of the essays address the future “because this moment can feel so overwhelming” and discusses what it means, “as Claudia Rankine says, to be in a perpetual state of mourning.”

She also talks about the importance of the Presidency of Barack Obama and his statements “that he could be a victim of the kind of senseless, random, state-sanctioned violence that many black Americans have been victim to in the past couple of years … those statements were a revelation … I think it’s really important for us to hear someone in position of power, like the position of power, to say that.”

Reviews and listings are piling up. Bustle includes it on their list of “17 Nonfiction Books Coming in August 2016,” writing “the book explores the progress we’ve made and the work left to be done.”

USA Today is also featuring the collection, giving it 4.5 stars out of 5 and saying, “The perils of walking, driving — indeed living — while black have become tragically apparent in recent months … At a time of such tension, The Fire This Time … might seem too much to bear. But ultimately, the prose and poetry contained in this concise volume … is illuminating and even cathartic.”

Vogue says the book affirms “the power of literature and its capacity for reflection and imagination, to collectively acknowledge the need for a much larger conversation, to understand these split-second actions in present, past, and future tense, the way that stories impel us to do. This is a book that seeks to place the shock of our own times into historical context and, most importantly, to move these times forward.”

The New York Post‘s gossip columnist, Cindy Adams focused on a book yesterday, Give Please a Chance (Hachette/jimmy patterson; Nov. 21), a joint project from James Patterson and Bill O’Reilly, illustrated by a variety of artists, with all proceeds going to charity.

She writes, “O’Reilly, whose shy retiring lips have possibly been shut for minutes, says  … ‘The message for children is that ‘please’ is a magical word. Like if you need a cookie or if you need a bedtime story, you also need to use the word ‘please.’ ”

While both authors have written titles for kids, this will be their first picture book and first collaboration. O’Reilly tweeted about it in May.

Excited to announce I’m writing a kid's book with James Patterson @JP_Books. GIVE PLEASE A CHANCE out 11/21! https://t.co/EVfux6uLOk -BO'R

— Bill O'Reilly (@BillOReilly) May 9, 2016

“Nobody could wait for Colson Whitehead’s new book — including Oprah, so here it is, a month early,” writes Ron Charles in The Washington Post.

Today, Winfrey announced that The Underground Railroad (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio; BOT) is the latest title in her Book Club 2.0. Originally scheduled for release on Sept. 13, it is available now, says Charles, as “the result of an extraordinary plan to start shipping 200,000 copies out to booksellers in secret.”

Oprah enthuses about the novel, below, saying it’s kept her up at night, her heart in her throat.

Calling it “Far and away the most anticipated literary novel of the year,” Charles says the novel “reanimates the slave narrative, disrupts our settled sense of the past and stretches the ligaments of history right into our own era … The canon of essential novels about America’s peculiar institution just grew by one.”

It received stars from the trades (Boolist, Kirkus, LJ, and PW) and was on a bevy of “most anticipated lists.”

Announcing the selection today on CBS This Morning, Oprah admits that, despite his literary reputation, she had never read a book by Whitehead before.

It was also a hit of BEA. Whitehead was one of Library Journal’s Day of Dialog speakers and was on the panel for the Adult Book and Author Breakfast. As we reported in our GalleyChat BEA review, Jessica Woodbury, blogger and Book Riot contributor, called the novel “spectacular,” and said, “The beauty of this book is that while it has that deep communal feel of folk tale, it also lives vibrantly through its characters. I cannot remember another book about this era that so completely brought the world to life in my mind. Just do yourself a favor and get this book.”

Oprah interviews the author, in a video on the CBS site as well as on Oprah.com.

For those thinking ahead to displays, The New York Times offered a host of possibilities in their review of Ben H. Winters’s Underground Airlines, connecting it to Whitehead as well as Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and Natashia Deon’s debut novel, Grace. And of course there is Octavia Butler’s modern classic, Kindred.

Premiering tomorrow night, August 2,  on PBS American Experience is a documentary titled The Boys of ’36, based on the bestseller The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown (Penguin/Viking; Penguin Audio; Thorndike).

A feature film based on the book’s proposal was announced in 2011, with Kenneth Branagh attached to direct. In 2014, a new director was announced, Peter Berg (Lone Survivor), but there’s been no further news since.

After midnight release parties and a bit of flashback nostalgia for readers now all grown up, the reviews for the newest take on the wizarding world of Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine), are flooding in.

While the play itself is a hit in London, the BBC reports in a round up of reviews of the book that “critics complained reading the script was an ‘incomplete experience’ as the story ‘demands to be seen’ [and that it was] ‘lacking the richness that acting and staging would add.'”

One review that arrived after that roundup, from the often critical Michiko Kakutani in the  daily NYT‘, disagrees, calling it  “absorbing and ingenious” and saying “even though it lacks the play’s much-talked-about special effects, it turns out to be a compelling, stay-up-all-night read.”

Finding the story well crafted (“the suspense here is electric and nonstop, and it has been cleverly constructed around developments recalling events in the original Potter novels”) Kakutani continues that author Jack Thorne “has a visceral understanding of the dynamics and themes at work in those novels … a dynamic, many readers can appreciate, with a particular resonance today.”

People acknowledges that  “Reading 300 pages of dialogue is not the same immersive experience as settling into one of Rowling’s massive tomes, but for fans of the series? It’s a must. ”

USA Today says the print book is “almost ‘Harry Potter’ enough” adding, “reading the script (three out of four stars) is an incomplete experience — noticeably lacking the richness that acting and staging would add to a realized production and the familiar Rowling prose a novel would have contained — it may capture just enough of the old Potter magic to please even the most skeptical of fans.”

The two films opening this week could not be more different. One is a beloved, gentle children’s tale and the other is the other is the next DC comic-based film extravaganza.

The Little Prince, after a long stretch of turbulence, is finally landing safely on the small screen.

As we wrote earlier, Paramount decided not to distribute the film on the eve of its March 18th release date, quickly followed by the news that Netflix would provide landing space.

The animated film will now premiere on Aug. 5, both on the streaming service and in some theaters. Below is the newly cut Netflix trailer:

The film features the voices of Jeff Bridges, Mackenzie Foy, Rachel McAdams, James Franco, Marion Cotillard, Benicio del Toro, Paul Giamatti, Paul Rudd, Budd Cort, Ricky Gervais, and Albert Brooks.
It is directed by Mark Osborn (Kung Fu Panda).

Tie-ins come out months ago:

The Little Prince Read-Aloud Storybook: Abridged Original Text, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (HMH BYR, 11/17/15)

The Little Prince Family Storybook: Unabridged Original Text, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (HMH BYR, 11/17/15).

HMH released a new translation of the original book in hardcover in October as well as several Little Prince board books. Published last year, The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antione de Saint-Exupery, written and illustrated by Peter Sis (Macmillan/FSG/Frances Foster), was on several best children’s books lists, including the New York Times 10 Best Illustrated.

Suicide Squad smashes onto the big screen on the 5th as well. As we noted in an earlier Titles to Know post, the film follows the action a super villain strike team who serve as covert agents on specialized black op missions.

It boasts a large ensemble cast including Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ike Barinholtz, Scott Eastwood, and Cara Delevingne.

The movie was featured on the cover of the July 15 issue of Entertainment Weekly and more recently dominated Comic-Con, “winning” the online buzz sweepstakes reports Screenrant and Variety (Game of Thrones did the best for small screen hits).

Collected editions:

Suicide Squad Vol. 4: The Janus Directive, John Ostrander (PRH/DC Comics) is the next collected edition.

Three other were released earlier:

Vol 1: Trial by Fire (Sept. 2015 — 9781401258313)

Vol. 2: The Nightshade Odyssey (Dec, 2015– 9781401258337)

Vol. 3: Rouges (April, 2016 — 9781401260910)

Requests are soaring for a memoir that details a key touchstone in the race for President, the feelings of alienation and loss among the white working class, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J. D. Vance (Harper; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

Demand is being generated by strong media coverage. The Wall Street Journal writes about it in a feature, The Washington Post printed an excerpt, and David Brooks recommends the book in his NYT‘s column “Revolt of the Masses,” writing “Vance’s family is from Kentucky and Ohio, and his description of the culture he grew up in is essential reading for this moment in history.”

In the WSJ Vance says his memoir seeks to address why he felt “culturally foreign” at Yale Law School and “started out as a quest to answer questions about his own upbringing but developed into a broader conversation about social divisions in the U.S. and feelings of disenfranchisement among the white working class.”

In the excerpted passage in the WP he writes, “economic cynicism brought with it a feeling that the country we believed in could no longer be trusted.”

His solution to a problem that spans multiple states is decidedly local, telling WSJ: “Concretely, I want pastors and church leaders to think about how to build community churches, to keep people engaged, and to worry less about politics and more about how the people in their communities are doing … I want parents to fight and scream less, and to recognize how destructive chaos is to their children’s future.”

His memoir is currently the 4th bestselling book on Amazon and holds have reached 8:1 ratios. A fact that one library patron shares with other readers of WSJ, writing in the comments section: “I tried to obtain Hillbilly Elegy from the library…I’m 95th in line for 12 copies.”

Interest in the subject has already proven high, as White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg (PRH/Viking; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample) attests.

It’s the beginning of a new month, which means several new James Patterson titles are set to arrive. In addition to the hardcover Bullseye (Michael Bennett #9), there is also the paperback original Chase (Hachette/BookShots; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), which is also a Michael Bennett story.

So far, there are no signs of over saturation. The hardcover is showing a holds queue as long as the one that awaited the publication of the previous title in the series. The BookShot title, however, shows many fewer holds.

The third Patterson title being released, also in the BookShot series, Let’s Play Make-Believe, (Hachette/BookShots; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), features new collaborator James O. Born. Although Born is known, as is Patterson, for thrillers, the plot summary for this one indicates that they are exploring new territory:

Both survivors of the divorce wars, Christy and Martin don’t believe in love at first sight and certainly not on a first date. But from the instant they lock eyes, life becomes a sexy, romantic dream come true. That is, until they start playing a strangely intense game of make-believe-a game that’s about to go too far.

Close on Patterson’s heels in holds is Debbie Macomber, with her most recent, Rose Harbor romance, Sweet Tomorrows (PRH/Ballantine Books; RH/BOT audio; Random House Large Print; OverDrive Sample).

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, Aug. 1, 2916

Advance Attention

Presto! : How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales, Penn Jillette (S&S; OverDrive Sample).

Penn and his magician partner Teller appeared  on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon this week (with a brief mention of the book). He is booked for HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher tonight. Next week, he is scheduled for several shows, including ABC’s Good Morning America and ABC’s The View.

March: Book Three, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions).

It’s good timing for the release of Congressman John Lewis’s third and final graphic novel about the civil rights movement. As we wrote earlier, Lewis was a very happy man when he won an Eisner for the second in the series, March: Book Two. The first in the series, March: Book One is a Coretta Scott King Honor Book.  Lewis attended Comic-Con this year and, as he did last year,  led a commemorative march with children through the convention hall, wearing a coat and backpack similar to those he wore as he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the Selma March in 1965.

The Making of Donald Trump, David Cay Johnston, (Melville House; OverDrive Sample).

The first new book about Trump since he became the official Republican candidate is from Brooklyn-based indie publisher Melville House, coming weeks ahead of the The Washington Post ‘s investigative Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power (S&S; S&S Audio; Aug 23).

Johnston appeared on PBS NewsHour a couple of weeks ago, along with Michael D’Antonio, author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, now in paperback as The Truth About Trump (Macmillan/Thomas Dunne).

Consumer Media Picks

Harmony, Carolyn Parkhurst (PRH/Pamela Dorman; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) is the People “Pick of the Week” — “At a breaking point with their autistic daughter Tilly, 13, the Hammond family moves to a remote camp whose charismatic leader posits back-to-nature living as a solution. The propulsive plot … is driven by multiple voices, most compellingly Tilly’s little sister’s.”

The second People pick is This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell (PRH/Knopf; OverDrive Sample; July 19) — “paints a portrait of two eccentric people struggling to transcend life’s messy mistakes” — also recently reviewed on NPR.

The third is You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample) — “Taut and raw, this is a mesmerizing story from a master of suspense.” The new issue of the NYT Book Review, expresses admiration for it under the headline, “In Megan Abbott’s New Murder Mystery, a Teenage Gymnast Sharp as a Knife.”

Peer Picks

Two August LibraryReads come out this week:

Die Like an Eagle, Donna Andrews (Macmillan/Minotaur; Dreamscape Media; OverDrive Sample).

“Meg and her family embrace America’s favorite past time. It’s the opening weekend for the Caerphilly is driven by multiple voices.” baseball league and Meg finds a body in the porta-potty. Meg, her friends and family must catch a killer and figure out how to oust the petty league president before everyone’s weekend is ruined. Reading Andrews’ books are like a visit home to your favorite relatives, plus she weaves humor and fun while still penning an enjoyable mystery.” — Karen Emery, Johnson County Public Library, Franklin, IN

Watching Edie, Camilla Way (PRH/NAL; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“Twisty psychological banter makes this book a thrill ride. Edie was the girl in high school who had it all. Heather was the awkward girl who wanted so badly to be accepted. That was high school and now Edie is a single mom caught in a dead end job. She is about to lose it when Heather comes to her rescue. While Edie loves being able to get her life back, the hold that Heather has on her and the baby is disconcerting. The story jumps back and forth between past and present and you will change your mind about their friendship right up to the last page.” — Kimberly McGee, Lake Travis Community Library, Austin, TX

Four August Indie Next selections also debut:

Christodora, Tim Murphy (Perseus/PGW/Legato/Grove Press; Blackstone Audio).

“Murphy uses Christodora House, an historic apartment building in the East Village of New York City, as the namesake and backdrop of his compelling debut novel. The story follows the lives of several residents over the course of four decades, expertly detailing the intersections of art and ambition, activism and loss, and the consequences of addiction and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. I can think of no novel in recent memory in which I felt so drawn to its characters and so emotionally invested in the outcome of their lives.” —Shawn Donley, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR

Carousel Court, Joe McGinniss (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Audio).

“Carousel Court begins with the decline of a marriage as members of the Maguire family find themselves in the suburbs of Los Angeles, struggling to hold onto their last vestiges of power to control what feels like the free fall of their lives. Examining the paradox of both our over-connected and disconnected world, McGinniss’ clear voice is beautifully balanced with the dark desperation he reveals as the all-too-common silent partner of our lives. This is a powerful book that should not be missed!” —Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA

The Bones of Paradise, Jonis Agee (HC/William Morrow; Harper Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“Agee presents the saga of the Bennett family in the years following the massacre at Wounded Knee. Formed and altered by the unforgiving Nebraska Sandhills, the Bennetts are a rough, conflicted lot, and their story is filled with secrets, lies, betrayals, vengeance, and murder. Agee evokes a lost world and time without sentiment, but with a beautiful subtlety interrupted only by the true horrors of well-researched fact. A must-read for lovers of Western literature, family sagas, and historical fiction.” —Amanda Hurley, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

Half Wild: Stories, Robin MacArthur (HC/Ecco; OverDrive Sample).

“MacArthur’s debut story collection is set in the hilly backcountry of southern Vermont — a rural landscape of half-abandoned farms and double-wide trailers, but also one of immense natural beauty and wildness. Her characters hew close to this land — even those who have left cannot help but return. These are beautifully drawn portraits of people who, despite poverty and decay, remain vibrantly alive to their world and to the power of memory. I cannot wait to read more from this author!” —Peter Sherman, Wellesley Books, Wellesley, MA

It is also an Indies Introduce title.

Tie-ins

Children’s fantasy dominates the tie-ins this week with two titles forthcoming.

Tim Burton’s adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is finally nearing its air date, opening on Sept. 30 and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Asa Butterfield, Eva Green, Chris O’Dowd, Ella Purnell, Allison Janney, Rupert Everett, Terence Stamp and Judi Dench.

A tie-in comes out this week. Several others will follow.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Movie Tie-In Edition), Ransom Riggs (PRH/Quirk Books; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

The Art of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: The Art of the Film, Leah Gallo (PRH/Quirk; Aug. 30, 2016).

Tales of the Peculiar, Ransom Riggs and illustrated by Andrew Davidson (PRH/Dutton Books for Young Readers; RH Audio/Listening Library; Sept. 3, 2016).

USA Today says this contains “10 fairy tales, each illustrated by Andrew Davidson, who also designed the cover. The original stories include tales of wealthy (but very hungry) cannibals who dine on the discarded limbs of peculiars … and the origins of the first ymbryne (a time manipulator that takes the form of a bird) … The book’s publication is similar to J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard.”

A Monster Calls is based on Patrick Ness’s novel about a story-telling monster and a troubled teen whose mother has cancer. It opens October 21st and stars Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson, and Lewis Macdougall.

There is a tie-in: A Monster Calls: A Novel (Movie Tie-in): Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd, Patrick Ness (Candlewick; OverDrive Sample).

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