Category Archives: Upcoming Titles

Go Set a Watchman Releases in 4 Weeks

Ok, folks – Harper Lee’s new book hits book store shelves in less than a month, on July 14th. You can pre-order all of the internet or your local bookstore. It’s been fun seeing how awareness of the book has developed. And it all started with the origin of the manuscript and all the questions surrounding that.

Now the covers are out. As with just about any book published today, it’s fun to compare the U.S. cover with the British cover. First, we have the U.S. cover, which seems to be purposefully designed to match the vintage To Kill a Mockingbird cover.

Go Set a Watchman is set 20 years after the end of TKAM, but the cover certainly lets you know you’re in the same place. Here’s the original 1st edition cover:

To_Kill_a_Mockingbird

While over across the pond they seem to have gone a little more modern noir feel I think, but the type is period.

Most of the time I usually prefer the U.K. counterparts to U.S. covers, but this time I’m non-plussed. The fact that the author’s name is set the same as the title feels weird. It’s as if the marketing and design teams could not come to an agreement so they just threw their hands up and said “Make it all the same size” or something.

Though I do like the way they shadowed in the words To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a bit literal for me, but it’s ok.

Both covers have an October harvest vibe as well. Maybe that figures in heavily to the story? We’ll have to wait and find out! It will be interesting to keep up with the reviews once they start rolling out when the book is released on July 14th. And to watch sales numbers. I know some folks took a step back when Harper Lee’s letters didn’t fetch a reserve price at a recent auction, but the crowd that buys million dollar scribbles is a totally different crowd than those waiting to see what Harper Lee has to say about Scout and Atticus.

What do you think of the covers? Have you pre-ordered the book or are you tired of the hype?

Buzz Book 2015

The folks over at Publisher’s Lunch have released this year’s Buzz Books. These annual FREE ebooks offer excerpts and background information for a few dozen not-yet-released books.

This year there is the Buzz Book 2015 and the Buzz Book 2015 – Young Adult (YA) edition.

The Buzz Book 2015 features 35 books covering both fiction and non-fiction books. What’s neat about this year is that there are some lesser-known authors in there as well as some names you’ll probably recognize.

While the YA edition features 20 books.

BuzzBook2015

Both editions are available through kindle, nook, Google Play, iBooks, and Kobo. Sorry no PDF version this year.

And a hat tip to BookChase for posting about this a couple of weeks ago. Leave a comment if you grab a copy of the free ebook and stumble across a new read that you want to check out. Lot’s of good books slated for the Fall it seems. Just what my TBR pile needs. . .

New Book Continues Stieg Larsson’s Series

The Girl in the Spider’s Web hits U.S. bookstore shelves on September 1, 2015 and the U.K. a few days earlier on August 27, 2015. This book is the fourth book in the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy“.

The U.S. publisher Knopf released the two covers yesterday. One for the U.S. edition and the other for the U.K. edition.

U.K. edition cover of "the Girl in the Spider's Web"
U.K. edition cover of “the Girl in the Spider’s Web”
U.S. edition cover of "the Girl in the Spider's Web"
U.S. edition cover of “the Girl in the Spider’s Web”

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” series was a global publishing phenomenon by all accounts. Not quite Harry Potter, but oh so close. The books raced up the charts in every country they were published in.

Since Larsson died in 2005, this book has been written, in secret, by a Swedish crime-news reporter. Hopefully it will live up to what Larsson had started. Some say Larsson had planned on the series to run a full seven books.

The NPR Blog has a few more details on the new books and series.

Five Upcoming Books I’m Excited About

The upcoming year is proving to be chock full of good books. Below is my short list of five upcoming books I can’t wait to read and it begins with a bit of breaking news. . .

Just last night, on his blog, author Nicholas Carr revealed Utopia is Creepy:

UtopiaIsCreepy

Nothing else is given or known, but it’s one I can’t wait to read. His last book The Glass Cage was fantastic and I highly recommend it to every adult with a functioning brain. Carr has written other best sellers, but Glass Cage really makes you think and reconsider the technology that is about to infect your world. I can only anticipate more of the same. Utopia Is Creepy by Nicholas Carr is out sometime in 2016.

LostTimeAccidentsThe Lost Time Accidents: A Novel by John Wray
Release date: February 9, 2016

Coming in at 512 pages, Wray’s upcoming book won’t be the fastest read of the year, but read the first paragraph of the promo copy:

“In his ambitious and fiercely inventive new novel, The Lost Time Accidents, John Wray takes us from turn-of-the-century Viennese salons buzzing with rumors about Einstein’s radical new theory to the death camps of World War Two, from the golden age of postwar pulp science fiction to a startling discovery in a Manhattan apartment packed to the ceiling with artifacts of modern life.”

How can that not be a fun book? I hear the story spans three generations and all the war, old-school mysteries and love affairs that three lifetimes demand.The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray hits bookstore shelves on February 9, 2016.

BadAssLibrariansThe Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
Release date: April 19, 2016

This one wins for best title and for the fact that it’s a true story! It tells the tale of some super-brave librarians in 2012 Timbuktu who hid ancient manuscripts from Al Qaeda as the terrorists were ransacking museums and libraries. The Bad-Ass Librarians hit the streets on April 19, 2016.

HourOfLandThe Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams
Release date: June 7, 2016

Here is the other non-fiction on my short list of awesome upcoming books. The U.S. National Park System turns 100 this year. The Hour of Land contains 12 stories showing us why the parks and the great outdoors are important today in this increasingly facebook-centered world. You can pick it up from your local book shop on June 7, 2016.

TimeSiegeTime Siege by Wesley Chu
Release date: July 12, 2016

This is the second book in Chu’s newest series. The first book Time Salvager came out last year and wound up being one of my favorite sci-fi books of 2015. If you like time travel tales, this series is a good one so far. The Chronomen are back in business July 12, 2016.