Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, February 23, 2016


William Morrow & Company: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

Del Rey Books: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

Peachtree Teen: Romantic YA Novels Coming Soon From Peachtree Teen!

Watkins Publishing: She Fights Back: Using Self-Defence Psychology to Reclaim Your Power by Joanna Ziobronowicz

Dial Press: Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood

Pantheon Books: The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera

Peachtree Publishers: Leo and the Pink Marker by Mariyka Foster

Wednesday Books: Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber

Editors' Note

The Shelf Feels the Facebook Love

Shelf Awareness is proud to note that we hit a milestone this past weekend: our Facebook page now has more than 500,000 likes!

We post regularly about our bookseller friends, giveaways and contests, book and publishing news, cool ideas and neat marketing campaigns from the world of books and, of course, lots of items about adorable bookstore cats and dogs, our love of reading and much more. To see what the fun is about, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter, too.

Many thanks to Robin Lenz and Christopher Priest, who have given us such an active social media presence!


Now Streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME: A Gentleman in Moscow


News

Napa Bookmine Opens Second Location

On Sunday, Napa Bookmine, Napa, Calif., had a soft opening for its second location, which is in Napa's Oxbow Public Market, a 40,000-square-feet marketplace that includes food vendors, artisan cafes and an organic produce outlet for local farms as well as an outdoor deck with seating along the Napa River. With the opening, Napa Bookmine's pop-up shop at the Market, Standard: News, Books, and Sundries, is closing.

In the 400-square-foot space, Napa Bookmine at Oxbow will offer all new books (in contrast to its main store, which sells 85% used books and 15% new), emphasizing travel, wine, culinary, art & design, and lifestyle books and periodicals. It will also have an expanded children's section and expanded gift section that will include greeting cards, sundries and other products that "complement the literary inventory."

"Our goals are to get as many books into the hands of Napans as possible, to share the power of the printed word with our community, and to make Napa a city of readers," Napa Bookmine owner Naomi Chamblin said, adding that she has been inspired by Tattered Cover's Joyce Meskis. "Books remind people to slow down, a reminder we desperately need in this day and age. Oxbow Public Market is a wonderful meeting place for locals, and we are thrilled to be a part of it!"

Steve Carlin, founder and managing partner of Oxbow Public Market, commented: "Every public market needs a great, community bookseller and Napa Bookmine certainly fits that bill."


GLOW: Greystone Books: brother. do. you. love. me. by Manni Coe, illustrated by Reuben Coe


Independent Bookstore Day: More Stores Than Ever

Some 430 stores will participate in Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 30, up from last year's count of 365 stores, according to Samantha Schoech, program director for IBD. Collectively, indies have ordered more than 22,000 IBD items and around 3,000 IBD tote bags.

Among this year's batch of exclusive IBD items is a numbered, signed edition of Kate DiCamillo's next book, Raymie Nightingale, along with a Neil Gaiman coloring book illustrated by Chris Riddell, a vinyl record called X Is For... featuring Angela Davis, Rebecca Solnit and others, and an essay collection from Ann Patchett titled The Care and Feeding of an Independent Bookstore. Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies, is the first-ever Author Ambassador for Independent Bookstore Day.

For Northern California Independent Booksellers Association booksellers, there will be an IBD Idea Exchange Lounge at the Spring Gathering on April 10, where booksellers will be able to share and discuss Bookstore Day ideas. Shelf Awareness will continue to monitor IBD preparations in the weeks to come.


BINC: Apply Now to The Susan Kamil Scholarship for Emerging Writers!


Amazon Boosts Free Shipping Minimum, Excludes Books

Amazon's new minimum for free shipping, which is now $49, up from $35, excludes "eligible books," for which the minimum for free shipping remains $25, TechCrunch reported. In addition, if a customer buys at least $25 in books, all other products in a shipment ship for free. Under this program, Amazon guarantees books will be shipped "5-8 business days" after all items are available to ship. The offer apparently includes some audiobooks.

The bump in free shipping minimums is widely seen as a prod to have customers sign up for Amazon Prime, which costs $99 a year and offers free two-day shipping.


Obituary Note: Rosario Ferré

Poet, novelist, essayist and children's book author Rosario Ferré, a "formidable figure in Puerto Rican letters who wrote novels in both Spanish and English, and who was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1995 for the family epic A House on the Lagoon [La casa de la laguna]," died February 18, the New York Times reported. She was 77. Her books include The Youngest Doll (Papeles de Pandora) and Sweet Diamond Dust: And Other Stories (Maldito amor y otros cuentos).

Ferré "wrote about Puerto Rican identity, often in a historical context, often from a feminist perspective and often satirically. She depicted the mixture, that its people often express, of the exaggerated pride in the beauty and culture of the island and the exasperation with its patriarchal traditions and geographical and physical limitations," the Times wrote.


Notes

Image of the Day: #EdiTORsOnTour

The very first Tor editors tour (#EdiTORsOnTour) is underway: editors (l.-r.) Melissa Frain, Whitney Ross and Miriam Weinberg are taking a road trip around the Southeast to visit authors, bookstores and roadside attractions on their way to joining V.E. Schwab, Susan Dennard and Veronica Rossi at their Nashville, Tenn., and Asheville, N.C., tour stops. The first stop on the tour was yesterday, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Ky.; see the full schedule here.


New York City's 'Impressive Array of Specialty Bookstores'

New York "is home to a wealth of excellent bookstores," the Washington Post observed in focusing on the city's "impressive array of specialty bookstores," highlighting "the ones designed to be the ultimate geek-out spots for subject-specific bookworms." Among the shops featured are Manhattan's Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, Books of Wonder and Idlewild Books, as well as Brooklyn's Singularity & Co.


Road Trip: '11 Beautiful Book Shops to Visit'

Travelstart featured "11 beautiful bookshops to visit on your travels," noting: "Some might say the only way to read the soul of a city is to step inside one of its bookshops. These days good independent book stores are so rare that it makes it worth the adventure of finding them."


Personnel Changes at Penguin Random House

Benjamin Steinberg has been promoted to associate director, content marketing & partnerships at Penguin Random House.



Media and Movies

Media Heat: Joe R. Lansdale on Fresh Air

Tomorrow:
Fresh Air: Joe R. Lansdale, author of Hap and Leonard mystery series, the basis for a Sundance TV series that begins March 2. The latest series title is Hap and Leonard (Tachyon Publications, $15.95, 9781616961916).

Tavis: Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, $28, 9781620402504).

NPR's Live Wire: Chris Offutt, author of My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir (Atria, $26, 9781501112461).

Last Call with Carson Daly: Grace Helbig, author of Grace & Style: The Art of Pretending You Have It (Touchstone, $19.99, 9781501120589).

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Dr. David B. Agus, author of The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health (Simon & Schuster, $27, 9781476712109).


Movies: He Wanted the Moon; Sharp Objects

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner will write a film adaptation of the memoir He Wanted the Moon: The Madness & Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, & His Daughter's Quest to Know Him by Mimi Baird and Eve Claxton. Deadline reported that the project is a co-production between Brad Pitt's Plan B and Cross Creek Pictures. Pitt bought the book's film rights last year, "and the expectation is he might play Dr. Perry Baird, a Texan Harvard-educated doctor who rose in the field of medicine in the 1920s."

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Amy Adams (The Office, Smallville) will star in and exec produce a potential TV series based on Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl). Variety reported that Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) is directing and Marti Noxon will be showrunner and writer.  Flynn is attached as a writer and exec producer.


Books & Authors

Awards: Montana Book; Nebulas; Lukas

The Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America by Liz Carlisle (Gotham Books) has won the 2015 Montana Book Award, which recognizes "literary and/or artistic excellence in a book written or illustrated by someone who lives in Montana, is set in Montana, or deals with Montana themes or issues."

Lentil Underground was cited for telling "the inspiring story of David Oien and other Montana organic farmers who work with heirloom seeds and biologically diverse farm systems. Under the brand Timeless Natural Food, their unique business movement has grown into a milliondollar enterprise."

Four honor books were also chosen:
Black River by S.M. Hulse (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Crossing the Plains with Bruno by Annick Smith (Trinity University Press)
Hawthorn: The Tree that has Nourished, Healed, and Inspired through the Ages by Bill Vaughn (Yale University Press)
Tunnel Vision by Susan Adrain (St. Martins/Griffin)

Presentations and a reception with the winning authors will take place on April 6 during the Montana Library Association Conference in Missoula. In addition, Ivan Doig will be remembered and honored.

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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has announced the nominees for the 2015 Nebula Awards, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. See the full lists here.

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Shortlists for the Lukas Book Prize Project Awards, which include the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize, can be seen here. This is the first time that shortlists have been announced for the Lukas Prizes. Winners will be announced March 30 and presented May 10. The awards are sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.


Top Library Recommended Titles for March

LibraryReads, the nationwide library staff-picks list, offers the top 10 March titles public library staff across the country love:

The Summer Before the War: A Novel by Helen Simonson (Random House, $28, 9780812993103). "Fans of Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand have reason to rejoice. She has created another engaging novel full of winsome characters, this time set during the summer before the outbreak of World War I. Follow the story of headstrong, independent Beatrice Nash and kind but stuffy surgeon-in-training Hugh Grange along with his formidable Aunt Agatha. Make a cup of tea and prepare to savor every page!" --Paulette Brooks, Elm Grove Public Library, Elm Grove, Wisc.

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam, $27, 9780399169496). "Jane Steele is a great read for lovers of Victorian literature who especially love their characters to have a lot of pluck! Jane Steele is the adventurous, irreverent, foul-mouthed broad that I so often loved about Jane Eyre, but in more wily circumstances. Remember that fabulous scene in Jane Eyre when she stands up to her aunt for the first time, and how you wanted to stand up from your comfy reading chair and cheer for her? Imagine an entire book just of those sorts of scenes. Absolutely fabulous fun!" --Abbey Stroop, Herrick District Library, Holland, Mich.

The Passenger: A Novel by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster, $25.99, 9781451686630). "This is a compulsively readable story of a young woman who has to keep switching identities and stay on the run. Is she a reliable narrator or not? What was the original event that sent her on the run? There is a lot of action and suspense as she tries to survive and evade the law while trying to keep her moral center intact. Unlike Lutz's Spellman books, this reads more like a Charles Portis road novel, though considerably more serious and dangerous. Highly recommended." --Beth DeGeer, Bartlesville Public Library, Bartlesville, Okla.

Marked in Flesh: A Novel of the Others by Anne Bishop (Roc, $27, 9780451474476). "In this thrilling installment, Bishop continues to explore the relationships of The Others and the humans who live at the Lakeside compound. Meanwhile, Humans First and Last organization has been making themselves known, after the attacks in the previous book that killed numerous Others along with their 'Wolf Lover' friends, they are not backing down. Little do they know it's not the Others humans need to be wary of but the Elders for which the Others act as a buffer. This is an excellent installment in the novels of the Others, exciting, heart-wrenching and suspenseful." --Emily Peros, Denver Public Library, Denver, Colo.

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (Ecco, $26.99, 9780062414212). "If you think your family is dysfunctional, move over, because here come the Plumbs. Suddenly faced with the dismantling of the nest egg they've counted on to solve their financial woes, the four Plumb siblings have to grow up, and fast. But though they all do some terrible things in the name of ambition, there's something lovable about the Plumbs. You can't fail to be moved by the beating heart of this novel, which seems to say that family, for good or ill, unites us all." --Mary Kinser, Whatcom County Library System, Bellingham, Wash.

Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben (Dutton, $28, 9780525955092). "Coben has made me lose more sleep over the years than all my other favorite authors combined. Joe Burkett has been murdered in front of his wife Maya. They have a two year old daughter who has a nanny. After the funeral, a friend gives her a picture frame that hides a camera so she can check on the care the nanny is providing her daughter. She watches the recording. Can she believe what she saw? Is she going crazy? Both? Buy a ticket for the coaster and find out for yourself. Keep your hands inside the car; it's going to be a wild ride." --Lisa Sprague, Public Services Librarian, Enfield Public Library, Enfield, Conn.

The Madwoman Upstairs: A Novel by Catherine Lowell (Touchstone, $25.99, 9781501124211). "Meet Samantha Whipple, a descendant of the Bronte family, who arrives at Oxford to study literature, as her father did before her. She receives a copy of Jane Eyre--a volume that she thought was destroyed in the fire that took her father's life. When a second Bronte novel belonging to her father turns up, she is convinced he has staged an elaborate treasure hunt for her promised inheritance. Enlisting the help of her sexy, young professor, Samantha sets out on a quest to find buried treasure and learns the value of friendship and courage along the way." --Kristen McCallum, Algonquin Area Public Library, Algonquin, Ill.

Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn (Avon, $7.99, 9780062388148). "This is the first in a prequel series to Quinn's popular Bridgerton series, set a generation earlier. Billie Bridgerton spent her childhood running wild with the neighboring Rokesbys, Andrew, Edward, and Mary. Now she runs the family estate for her father and still runs as wild as she can. The eldest Rokesby, George, never really approved of Billie, but when he rescues her from a roof they begin to come to a new understanding." --Mary Aileen Buss, Long Beach Public Library, N.Y.

Dimestore: A Writer's Life by Lee Smith (Algonquin, $24.95, 9781616205027). "Evenly divided between a book about Smith's process and her life, first as a Southern mountain child and, later, as the parent of a schizophrenic child, this book is interesting and compelling. Despite being surrounded by loving family and being blessed with an active imagination, Lee copes with a mentally ill mother. Later, her son's mental illness and early death brings her to the breaking point but she is saved by her writing. This is a read-alike for Karr's The Liars' Club. It desperately needs a cinematic translation for its elegant and evocative writing." --Lois Gross, Hoboken Public Library, Hoboken, N.J.

All Things Cease to Appear: A Novel by Elizabeth Brundage (Knopf, $26.95, 9781101875599). "When the Clare family purchases a ramshackle farmhouse at a foreclosure auction, it appears that all is well in their world, until George comes home one evening from his job as an Art History Professor at the local private college and finds his wife murdered and their three-year-old untended yet unharmed. Told through the eyes of the townspeople and the families involved, this is a gorgeously unsettling look at a marriage and what happens to a community in the process of change." --Jennifer Dayton, Darien Library, Darien, Conn.


Book Review

Review: Young Once

Young Once by Patrick Modiano, trans. by Damion Searls (New York Review of Books, $14.95 trade paper, 9781590179550, March 8, 2016)

Patrick Modiano's 1981 novel, Young Once (never before translated into English), opens shortly before both Odile and her husband Louis's 35th birthday, with their children playing in the garden of their chalet near Switzerland. But this is actually the end of the story, and after nine pages, as Louis is driving a friend to the train station, he's caught in the rain and begins to remember getting out of the military service on a similar rainy day 15 years before. The remainder of the novel is his memory of that time.

A mysterious, quickly made pal of two months helps Louis get dry shoes and a room with a bath, and promises to introduce him to an important friend who will give him a job. Odile, similarly searching for employment, meets a talent scout for a record company who promises to give her work. The two 19-year-olds are thrown together in postwar Paris, and have only each other to cling to when they are asked to transport of suitcase full of money out of the country.

The enigmatic characters swirling around them (Brossier, Bejardy, Bellune, Bauer), ensnaring them in a youthful wartime indiscretion, have vague identities, unclear motives and a surreal similarity. The relationship between two of them, Brossier and Bejardy, spans the entire novel, slowly accruing details and a past without losing its ultimately unknowable nature. The scenes with the fat blond policeman pursuing Odile are appropriately anxiety inducing. Even greater tension is generated by the predator who lures her into his car. Clinging to the last of their dreams, alone and lost in Paris, Odile and Louis both become compromised by wartime morality.

Modiano's stark, unadorned style is anything but simple. His world is opaque and doesn't surrender answers readily. Characters are sometimes little more than names whose actions are unpredictable. His language can be vague, often ambiguous. Unlike some of Modiano's later plots that lose steam halfway through or stubbornly refuse to tie up at the end, the plot of Young Once continues to build throughout.

Though the reader is perfectly aware from the first page that Louis and Odile will marry and have children, Modiano still manages to make their coming together appear fragile and endangered as they escape from their youth to find themselves at the rich old age of 35, convinced that now at last they are through changing, not realizing how young they still are. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

Shelf Talker: A married couple in their mid-30s look back on their youth in postwar Paris in Nobel Prize-winner Patrick Modiano's fifth novel, never before translated into English.


The Bestsellers

Top-Selling Self-Published Titles

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Some Sort of Love by Melanie Harlow
2. Bait & Switch by Kendall Ryan
3. Rescuing Rayne by Susan Stoker
4. The Lie by Karina Halle
5. Lightning Lingers by Barbara Freethy
6. The Baller by Vi Keeland
7. Bound, Spanked and Loved by Various
8. Guarding His Obsession by Alexa Riley
9. RoomHate by Penelope Ward
10. A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]


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