EarlyWord

In a rare documentary look at a print genre, steampunk is examined in the film Vintage Tomorrows,  that begins airing on July 19th via VOD and digital.

The film features interviews with authors, inventors, fashion designers, musicians, and artists. Highlighted authors include William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Cherie Priest, China Miéville, Cory Doctorow, and Gail Carrier. Also available is a companion, Vintage Tomorrows, published by O’Reilly.

Variety reports that the movie, which originally screened at last year’s Comic-Con, was acquired by  Samuel Goldwyn Films and the release date is set to coincide with this year’s Comic-Con.

An author many of you met via our Penguin First Flights Debut author program, Natalie Baszile is about to gain wider recognition. A 13-episode series based on her novel Queen Sugar (Penguin/Pamela Dorman; Thorndike; 2014), will get a two-night premiere on Oprah’s network, OWN September 6th and 7th.

The first two episodes in the 13-part series are directed by Ava DuVernay, who worked with Oprah on the film Selma. All the rest of the episodes will also be directed by women. DuVernay told People magazine, “If Game of Thrones can have all men for the last 3 seasons, Queen Sugar can have all women and show what a fantastic show can be made from our hands and our minds.”

Set in Southern Louisiana, the novel is about 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.”

Teaser is available here.

The Traitor’s Wife, Allison Pataki (S&S/Howard; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) got a big boost from Kathie Lee Gifford yesterday. The Today Show host named the novel as her “favorite thing” of the week. You can watch it here, but a warning, KLG doesn’t say much about it, just that it’s one of her favorite “historical fiction novels” and it’s about  Benedict Arnold’s wife, Peggy Shippen, who was “such a slut,” to which co-host Hoda chimes in “So juicy! So juicy!” That was enough to make it rise dramatically on Amazon, jumping from a sales rank of #9,217 to #33.

They also mention that it’s being made into a major motion picture.

It also tops the Huffington Post‘s list of “10 Books That All Hamilton Fans Must Read!” saying:

“Apparently Alexander Hamilton had success with the ladies. And you know one lady in particular who caught his eye? Peggy Shippen, the beautiful and beguiling young wife of patriot-turned-traitor Benedict Arnold … The rumors and reports were that Hamilton, who was in Arnold’s home the day the plot was thwarted, was so moved by chivalrous concern and empathy for the poor Peggy that he brought her flowers in bed.”

Coming off the long holiday weekend, the media is wondering what went wrong at the box office for Steven Spielberg’s critically acclaimed The BFG., based on the book by Roald Dahl.

Opening this week is a childrens movie that is the opposite of The BFG, panned by critics, but expected to do very well.

Secret Life of Pets opens July 8. The animated film follows the adventures of pets when no owners are watching. It stars the voices of Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, and Kevin Hart.

Reviews are generally flat for the comic romp created by the same team that made “the ultra-successful Despicable Me and Minions movies.”  The Guardian gives it 3 out of 5 stars and calls it “silly but funny.” Indiewire gives it a B-, saying “It may be technically impeccable, but it’s something less than a feeling.” The reviewer for Den of Geek says, “I’m sure it’ll make lots and lots of money … I’m less sure that lots and lots of people will love it.”

It is not based on a book but there are tie-ins, as we reported in the May 30 Titles to Know.

The other wide-release film this week is Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. The raucous and bawdy comedy came out first as a memoir, written by brothers Mike and Dave Stangle with the intent of using it as a bid to get a movie contract.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s review is damning, but it is expected to be a blockbuster, starring as it does Zac Efron and Adam DeVine opposite Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza. A tie-in came out on June 21.

Already disappointing horror fans is the film version of Stephen King’s Cell. Even though King adapted his own novel, working on the screenplay with Adam Alleca (The Last House on the Left), reviews are not good.

Horrorfreak News says it is an “absolute disaster … A disappointment and an embarrassment – for all those involved … With all of the mega-talent surrounding this production, I have to ask, “Seriously, what happened here?’”

BloodyDisgusting says “Given the absurdity of the premise, you’d think Cell would be an entertaining ride. It’s not. It’s gratuitously grim and gloomy, with no real message to drive this misery home … The story packs absolutely no punch and the solid stable of actors look bored.”

The film was released on June 10th on VOD and opens, without much promotion, in a limited run of theaters on July 8. A tie-in came out last week.

Our Little Sister, a Japanese film with subtitles, is opening in LA and NYC on July 8, to be followed by a wider release later. It is based on the manga series Umimachi Diary by Akimi Yoshida.

It received modest to glowing reviews when it aired at Cannes. The Guardian said the “sweetly tender movie … is superbly unforced and unassuming, finding delicate notes of affirmation and optimism and discreetly celebrating the beauty of nature and family love. It is watercolour cinema with nothing watery about it.”

The Hollywood Reporter, on the other hand, sums it up as “Generous spirited, pristinely shot and, quite frankly, somewhat dull.”

No tie-in edition was issued and the series was not published in the US. The author wrote the Banana Fish series, published in the U.S. by Viz Media.

It may be a record-breaking week for the record-breaking James Patterson. Five new titles arrive with his name on them. Four are from his new series of short original paperbacks, BookShots (at least two are published the first of each month. July is one of the bonanza months), plus a YA title, Treasure Hunters: Peril at the Top of the World. In addition, the paperback version of NYPD Red 4 is being released.

The first two titles in the BookShots were published last month. Both are still on the NYT Mass Market list after 3 weeks. Both are readily identifiable as Patterson products.  Cross Kill extends his most popular series, the one he writes solo, Alex Cross, and Zoo 2 arrived as the second season of the TV adaptation of Zoo launched.

This month’s titles may not fare as well. Only one is from an established Patterson series, Women’s Murder Club. The other three are romances, with one of them being, as Patterson tells Al Roker on the Today Show, “A kind of Fifty Shades of Grey, but maybe a little better story.”

He doesn’t reveal the title, but we’re guessing Little Black Dress, (Hachette/Bookshots; Hachette Audio) is his Fifty Shades readalike. A cover blurb reads, “Slip into something … irresistibly sexy” and the plot description reads, “Magazine editor Jane Avery spends her nights alone with Netflix and Oreos — until the Dress turns her loose. Suddenly she’s surrendering to dark desires, and New York City has become her erotic playground. But what began as a fantasy will go too far . . . and her next conquest could be her last.”

It is co-written by Emily Raymond, who has written two YA titles with Patterson, First Love and The Lost.

The other two romance titles are in the sub-series BookShots Flames. Holds are light on these two (and Patterson’s name is not a prominent on the covers).

The McCullagh Inn in Maine, Jen McLaughlin, James Patterson (Foreword by), (Hachette/Bookshots; Hachette Audio)

McLaughlin is a best selling self-pubbed author. This is her first with Patterson and it will be followed by A Wedding in Maine: A McCullagh Inn Story in January (9780316501170).

Learning to Ride, Erin Knightley, James Patterson (Foreword by), (Hachette/Bookshots; Hachette Audio). Kingsley has written seven historical romance novels. This is her first with Patterson.

The title with the most holds, is, unsurprisingly more identifiable as a Patterson title, an extension of the Women’s Muder Club hardcover series. Still, holds are just 20% of those you’d see for a hardcover release in the series.

The Trial: A BookShot: A Women’s Murder Club Story, James Patterson, Maxine Paetro, (Hachette/Bookshots; Hachette Audio)

Below are more titles that will draw attention this week. All are listed, along with and several other notable titles arriving next week, in  our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of July 4, 2016

Advance Attention

Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia,  (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample)

This is the hardcover compilation of a book published as an ebook serial earlier this spring. It was launched to some excitement from the media, both because Fellowes is the creator of  Downton Abbey and because of the format. The Atlantic declared that it represented,  “The Triumph of the Serial,” but it seems the public did not share that view.

The UK trade publication, The Bookseller, explores where Belgravia went wrong, blaming it on mishandling of the medium, but perhaps the fault lies with the content. The Seattle Times damns it as “rather dull.” Comparing it to Downton Abbey, the reviewer says it “feels like a respectable but socially inferior cousin; it might get invited to dinner, but only out of obligation.”

The audio is read by the great Juliet Stevenson (OverDrive Sample here) delivering a line worthy of Maggie Smith as the dowager Countess of Grantham,

“She was at that period of her life that almost everyone must pass through, when childhood is done wth and a faux maturity untrammeled by experience gives one a sense that anything is possible, until the arrival of real adulthood proves conclusively that it is not.” seem to have either captured the public’s imagination or had the commercial success that it might have done.”

Fellowes is scheduled to appear on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show on Thursday, Jul 07 2016.

Here Comes the Sun, Nicole Dennis-Benn. (Norton/Liveright; Highbridge Audio; OverDrive Sample)

If you attended the AAP/LibraryReads Librarian Author lunch at BEA, you will remember the author’s becoming overwhelmed as she said she wrote this book for family and friends she left behind in Jamaica. The NYT interviews the author and also reviews the book, saying. “This lithe, artfully-plotted debut concerns itself with the lives of those for whom tourists can barely be bothered to remove their Ray-Bans, and the issues it tackles — the oppressive dynamics of race, sexuality and class in post-colonial Jamaica — have little to do with the rum-and-reggae island of Sandals commercials.” The Miami Herald agrees, “Here Comes the Sun arrives in the season of the beach read, but with eloquent prose and unsentimental clarity, Dennis-Benn offers an excellent reason to look beyond the surface beauty of paradise. This novel is as bracing as a cold shower on a hot day, a reminder that sometimes we need to see things as they are, not as we wish they would be.”

Trump and Me: Donald Trump and the Art of Delusion by Mark Singer, (PRH/Tim Duggan Books)

An updated version of an essay published in the New Yorker 20 years ago. Despite its age, writes the Telegraph, it “offers clearer insight into the mind of the presumptive Republican nominee than any of the detailed biographies written over the years.”

Amid mixed to downright terrible reviews, and questions about whether it’s possible to make a non-racist version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, the latest incarnation, The Legend of Tarzan is bringing new attention to a fascinating real-life character, 19th C black human rights advocate, George Washington Williams. Played by Samuel L. Jackson in the movie, which opens on Friday, he travels with Tarzan to Africa.

Williams actually did travel to the Congo in 1890 (but did not encounter the fictional Tarzan). Appalled by what he saw there, he tried to shame King Leopold of Belgium in a long open letter about the horrors the Congolese were suffering under Belgian rule (more on Williams from MoviePilot).

Both Jackson and director David Yates tell Variety that Williams deserves a film of his own. Unfortunately, however, this movie may not make the best case for it. The LA Times writes, “Part comic relief, part valued ally, Williams is an altogether puzzling script component, and Jackson’s habit of sounding like he just stepped out of Pulp Fiction does not help things.”

For more about Williams and this period, two backlist titles are available:

George Washington Williams: A Biography, written by the Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient John Hope Franklin (Duke UP, 1998)

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Adam Hochschild (HMH/Mariner; OverDrive Sample)

An award-winning best seller, it was the basis for a 2006 documentary.

PBS Newshour just launched Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars, Nathalia Holt (Hachette/Little, Brown; OverDrive Sample) into book sales orbit, helping it soar on Amazon from a sales rank of #6,540 to 146.

The dramatic move is due to a segment of the show’s special summer reading series that offers author interviews conducted at book shows around the country. The Newshour‘s Jeffrey Brown sat down with Holt at the Los Angeles Book Festival and the pair talked about women in science during the early years of the space program and today.

Holt says that in the early days of the Jet Propulsion Lab a group of women called “computers” figured out the calculations of the space program, doing math with pencil and paper and some very bulky calculators.

Once computers were introduced, these women became the first programmers.

Her book traces their history and accomplishments and recounts how both NASA and JPL overlooked their achievements as time went by. Case in point, none were invited to the 2008 gala held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Explorer 1 (America’s first satellite), an oversight that is particularly galling since one of the Rocket Girls, Barbara Paulson, figured out the trajectory on the night Explorer 1 launched, working in the control room. Holt says “when the first American satellite is a success, its because of her. She is the one that found out it’s actually in orbit.”

Holt also talks about how 2016 is a “desperate time for women in technology,” largely due to a lack of role models. In 1984, she says “37 percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences were awarded to women. And today that number is 18 percent.” While female astronauts are doing astoundingly well, making up half of the current class at NASA, female engineers are seeing their lowest numbers in decades.

Holt hopes reading the stories of the pioneering Rocket Girls and learning what they achieved and overcame, will help change that.

Pop culture sites are full of excited reactions to the trailer for the Warner adaptation of The Girl With All The Gifts, a zombie novel published in 2014 by M.R. Carey (Hachette/Orbit; Hachette Audio/Blackstone; OverDrive Sample). The book is also rising on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result of the attention.

io9 says “The Girl With All the Gifts looks unlike any zombie movie we’ve ever seen—and if it’s half as good as the book, it’ll be a genre standout for sure.”

ars technica says “At last, a new zombie movie that looks original and compelling … Pop culture may be reaching peak zombie, but stories like The Girl with All the Gifts prove that even the most tired tropes can feel vital again if they’re done right.”

Librarians may recall the novel was an Indie Next pick and made the USA Today bestseller list. The short story version (“Iphigenia in Aulis”) was a finalist for the 2013 Edgar Awards.

The film staring Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close, is directed by Colm McCarthy, who has run several hit British TV shows including Sherlock, Doctor Who, and The Tudors.

M.R. Carey is a lightly disguised pen name for Mike Carey who is best known in the comics world (he has worked on both Marvel and DC series) and wrote The Unwritten (PRH/Vertigo; coming in hardback in a collected edition Dec. 2016). Under the Mike Carey name he is also known for the Felix Castor novel series (The Devil You Know [Hachette/Orbit] is the first).

M.R. Carey’s “second” book, Fellside, another Indie Next pick, was published this spring (Hachette/Orbit; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson (HC/Amistad) is 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

The novel marks Woodson’s return to adult fiction, after publishing multiple award-winning titles for young readers such as Brown Girl Dreaming and After Tupac & D Foster.

The novel, which appeared on multiple summer reading lists, also impressed trade reviewers, earning a rare All Star sweep, with starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

The full list of 20 titles also includes the #1 LibraryReads pick for July, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (PRH/Crown; RH Audio) and another librarian favorite, The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample).

UPDATE: Reversing his decision, Gay Talese now says that he does not disavow the book and that he will promote it. First reported by Roger  Friedman in Show Biz 411, the story has been picked up by many other publications, including the New York Times.

Author Gay Talese has elected to disavow his latest book, The Voyeur’s Motel, (Grove Press) set for publication on July 12 because of “credibility issues,” reports the Washington Post.

Based on journals kept by Gerald Foos, a Colorado motel owner who spied on his guests for years, movie rights to the book had been acquired by DreamWorks, with Sam Mendes attached to directing. An extract of the book was published as a story in the New Yorker in April.

Unfortunately, Talese was unaware that Foos did not own the motel for the entire period he claimed, a fact the Washington Post uncovered. When informed about the discovery, Talese responded to the Post, “I should not have believed a word [Foos] said,” adding, “I’m not going to promote this book. How dare I promote it when its credibility is down the toilet?”

It appears the book will still be published. Grove CEO Morgan Entrain notes that most of the events in the book took place before Foos sold the motel, but, says the Post, “the company would consider appending an author’s note or footnotes in subsequent printings to account for errors or missing information.”

A trailer has just been released for the movie 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, Tom Hanks is in the lead role, with Laura Linney as his wife. The movie will be released on Sept. 9.

Tie-in:

Sully : My Search for What Really Matters
Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, III, Jeffrey Zaslow
HarperCollins/Morrow,  August 30, 2016
Trade Paperback
Mass Market

Soon after, Hanks stars in Inferno, based on the book by Dan Brown. It opens Oct. 28th.

Several tie-ins are being released, see our list of upcoming movie tie-ins.

The title role in Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of  Margaret Atwood’s 1996 historical crime novel, Alias Grace (PRH/Anchor; OverDrive Sample) will be played by Sarah Gadon, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In the novel, Atwood explores the true story of a double murder that took place in Canada in the 1840’s. Like a 19th century version of Serial, the question of whether the poor young Irish immigrant Grace Marks was guilty of killing her employer and his housekeeper captured public attention at the time.

The novel received critical acclaim winning The Scotiabank Giller Prize, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards. It was also named to the ALA Notable Book list, and picked as one of the year’s best novels by The New York Times as well as by Booklist and Library Journal.

Reading Francine Prose’s description of the plot in the NYT Sunday Book Review, you can see what attracted the producers to the story about “a pretty young woman who was either the loathsome perpetrator or another innocent victim of an infamous crime” and imagine the pitch, “Making a Murderer meets Penny Dreadful.”

Netflix has not yet set a release date for the series.

Costco’s influential book buyer Pennie Clark Ianniciello generally picks one title to feature in Costco’s monthly publication, The Costco Connection, but for the July issue, she picks an entire format, audiobooks. It seems she is new to audio, perhaps influenced by Costco’s own sales numbers, or by reports, such as the one by Market Watch in May, that it is the “fastest-growing segment of the book publishing industry … popular enough to outsell some traditional books … sometimes four times as well.”

She highlights two recent titles narrated by Scott Brick as examples:

The Job: A Fox and O’Hare Novel by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg (PRH/Random House Audio)

The Assassin, Clive Cussler and Justin Scott (PRH/Penguin Audio)

In an accompanying interview, Brick says he reads every book before he begins recording, looking for details such as character names, place names, pronunciation issues, and foreign phrases and a researcher makes sure he gets them right. “If you guess how something is pronounced,” he says, “you will be wrong.”

Brick won an Audie this year for his reading of the modern SF classic Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (Brilliance Publishing; Audio Sample).

On Fresh Air yesterday, host Terry Gross held a 30-minute conversation about Zika with Donald G. McNeil, a science reporter for The New York Times and author of the new book, Zika: The Emerging Epidemic (Norton; Random House Audio).

The two talk about how Zika is transmitted, its odd scale of danger, the Olympics, and the timeline for a vaccine.

McNeil says Zika is a mild infection in 99.99 percent of the cases. Only women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant are at risk and the infection carries grave danger in those cases. This year is excepted to be the worst for infections as no one in the US has yet developed antibodies.

McNeil says that the scientific community is split on cancelling the Olympics due to Zika, pointing out that August is actually a low season for the insects.

The best way to prevent bites while sitting outside is simply to have fans blowing, says McNeil, the bugs have to expend a great deal of energy to fly and fans make it even more difficult for them.

The interview makes clear why this is likely to be one of the summer’s major topic of conversation.

Taking off like a hot Internet IPO, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, Antonio García Martínez (HC/Harper; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) is rocketing up Amazon’s sales rankings, jumping over thousands of books in its way to rise from #6,415 to 301, due in part to NPR’s Marketplace, which featured the book yesterday. Host Kai Ryssdal talked with the author, a Silicon Valley insider, about Facebook Exchange, the software that enables ads to follow users from online shopping sites to Facebook. That code has created an income stream which is essential, says García Martínez, because ads “pay for the Internet.”

The book was also recently covered in the The New York Times, in a review that begins by detailing all the reasons not to like it, including the author’s boasting about his own lavish lifestyle, and including a “blizzard of score-settling.”

Then the review turns to the importance of what García Martínez has to say when he is not bragging or bashing, his insights into how the Internet and Silicon Valley work, which raises the book to a level of “a must-read” that is “an irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.”