Books to Film: Great New Movies Based on Books Coming Out Today!

The book:

From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraqi War, called him "The Legend"; meanwhile the enemy feared him so much they placed a bounty on his head. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle's masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.

Includes new material by Taya Kyle.

The book:

Into the Woods brings well-known fairytale characters to musical life, interwoven with the story of a baker and his wife, whose longing for a child is thwarted by a mischievous witch. Stephen Sondheim's songs, seamlessly melded to James Lapine's text, are perfect expressions of the complications of living in modern society and the difficult choices we encounter on the paths of our lives. Into the Woods premiered on Broadway in 1987, winning three Tony Awards. It has been a beloved favorite on stages throughout the United States and around the world for almost thirty years.

On December 25, 2014, Into the Woods was released as a major motion picture, produced by Walt Disney Pictures. The film, directed by Rob Marshall, stars Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, James Corden, and Chris Pine. This book includes an eight-page insert with color photographs from the film.

The book:

In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand.

The book:

Big Eyes is the new movie from iconic filmmaker Tim Burton. Re-teaming with the writers of Ed Wood, Burton returns to the biopic genre by telling the story of Margaret and Walter Keane, and their beautiful and melancholy ‘big eyes’ paintings.

This companion book features behind the scenes images detailing everything from costume design to cinematography, and original interviews explore the making of the movie all the way from script to final cut. Also featured is a gallery of Margaret Keane’s work.

NYT 10 Best Books of 2014

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Dispatch From The Fields: "Station Eleven was for me, the best book I read in 2014." ~ Joe

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

Joe says:
"I have been a huge fan of Emily St. John Mandel since I read her debut, Last Night in Montreal and have been thrilled to watch her evolution as a writer with each subsequent novel. And now, in her fourth book, the utterly amazing Station Eleven, St. John Mandel has achieved such success with its nomination for the National Book Award. And this is certainly a novel that deserves that nomination (and I say the win!) 

How to describe this book... A dystopian novel? An ode to theater and classical music? A book on our individual searches for meaning in a world that seems to care little for us? A meditation on today?
 
It is all of these, and more. The book opens in a Toronto theater where a famous Hollywood actor dies onstage playing his dream role. And then all hell breaks loose as the world, as we know it, ends. St. John Mandel then tells a story, dancing back and forth in time, of a group called the Traveling Symphony wanders what remains of the Michigan and Ontario area. She focuses on five people, and how their lives intersect (either before or after the end of the world). This novel is breathtakingly beautiful. St. John Mandel's writing is superb. The reader feels as if they are looking over the character's backs, so immediate and real is the prose. This also makes this book terrifying at times. Imagine a world without electricity, without the conveniences so quickly necessary. No guaranteed safety our society provides. Yet the author also brings out the hope and humanity of this new world, while writing a lovesong to our age, almost as if she is reminding us not to take it all for granted. There were whole sections I reread, either to absorb the story as connections were revealed, or simply to enjoy the beautiful prose. This is a novel to savor, but it is so deliciously good, you will want to devour it. Buy it for yourself, but if for your friends because you're going to want to talk about it. 

Station Eleven was for me, the best book I read in 2014. Seeing this talented young author nominated for the National Book Award made me glad to see others feel the same way. And it excites me, because it means so many more readers will now get a chance to find out what us Indie Booksellers have been saying for years... Emily St. John Mandel is a must-read! Read this latest, then go back and read her first three. Trust me, you'll be very glad you did!"

Tattered Cover Folks Sharing Some Of Their Favorite Holiday Reads

Sydney's Favorite

Dylan Thomas, one of the greatest poets and storytellers of the twentieth century, captures a child's-eye view, and an adult's fond memories, of a magical time of presents, aunts and uncles, the frozen sea, and in the best of circumstances, newly fallen snow.

Another Favorite from Lynn

Celebrate Christmas with the joyous poetry of the incomparable Maya Angelou. 

Angelou’s beautiful, moving, and beloved poem, which she first read at the 2005 White House tree-lighting ceremony, now comes alive as a fully illustrated children’s book, celebrating the promise of peace in the holiday season. In this simple story, a family joins with their community—rich and poor, black and white, Christian, Muslim, and Jew—to celebrate the holidays.

This special package includes an audio CD of the author reading the poem aloud.

Mark L. Love This Book

"Forget Dancer, Prancer, Comet, and Vixen. . . . Good Clement, wherever he is, will not be gnashing his teeth." ~New York Times Book Review 

"Set in a Louisiana bayou and told in Cajun dialect-e chirren been nezzle/Good snug on de flo'-the poem has lively illustrations that perfectly suit the unique text." ~ Horn Book 

More than twenty-five years after its first appearance, Cajun Night Before Christmas has become a modern classic that has sold more than 490,000 copies and has served as the model for Pelican's ongoing, best-selling Night Before Christmas series. The formula that started this success story is surprisingly simple: take the classic story of jolly old St. Nicholas, place it in a Louisiana bayou, dress Santa Claus in muskrat "from his head to his toes," pile his skiff high with toys, and hitch it to eight friendly alligators. The result is a delightful twist on an old and familiar tale. It is Christmas on the bayou.

John W. Recommends "The Blue Carbuncle"

'Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science'

For more than a century the Holmes stories have held a strange, almost inexplicable grip on the popular imagination. They are intimately associated with late Victorian and Edwardian society, yet curiously timeless in their appeal. The characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, together with their housekeeper Mrs Hudson and their address at 221B Baker Street are as familiar today as when they made their first appearance in the late 1880s. The stories have been endlessly interpreted, adapted, and modernized, but still we return to Arthur Conan Doyle's originals.

This new selection of some of the best of Sherlock Holmes is designed to give readers a full sense of his world: the brooding fog of London, ruined heirs in creaking mansions, and hidden crimes in the farthest-flung corners of the British Empire. The stories take Holmes's career from its early days to its end, and include the book-length "Sign of the Four". Barry McCrea's introduction investigates the currents that lie beneath the surface. 

Erica Love This Book!

Raymond Briggs' award-winning, classic story about the friendship between a boy and a snowman is now available in a generously-sized board book. This wordless tale is told entirely in dream-like pictures, making it perfect for young not-quite-yet readers. The Snowman perfectly captures the wonder and innocence of childhood and has enchanted children for over 30 years.

Top Selling Cookbooks In Indie Bookshops

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"The author here has achieved a worthy feat: making an historical incident about which we think we already know more than enough into a legitimate thriller." ~Eric B.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction

A whistle-blower. A witch hunt. A cover-up. Secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, and government corruption. Welcome to 1890s Paris.

Alfred Dreyfus has been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment on a far-off island, and publicly stripped of his rank. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, an ambitious military officer who believes in Dreyfus's guilt as staunchly as any member of the public. But when he is promoted to head of the French counter-espionage agency, Picquart finds evidence that a spy still remains at large in the military—indicating that Dreyfus is innocent. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself. 

Eric B. says: 
"The author here has achieved a worthy feat: making an historical incident about which we think we already know more than enough into a legitimate thriller. After having read the acknowledgements to the book, I’m confident that the events portrayed are as close to the real truth as possible within the framework of a novel. I have maintained for years that more can be learned from honest fiction than from other sources, no matter the sincerity and scrupulousness with which they are produced.

The matter of the degradation, and that is the precise term formally used in this instance, of the French Army Officer Alfred Dreyfuss has been the subject of many books of both fiction and nonfiction (as well as a fairly famous cinema adaptation), by authors from many countries. It may be because of the blatantly self-serving and shamelessly political motives of the prosecution, but also because of the heroic efforts to bring the truth to light.

The protagonist and narrator of this tale is Marie-George Picqualt, a young officer collaterally connected to the original trial of the famous alleged traitor who becomes the most strident and dedicated disciple of proving his innocence and the perfidy of the French Army’s general command in the slipshod investigation prosecution and subsequent covering-up of the infamous incident. The narrative follows Picqualt's discovery that Dreyfus was railroaded and the identity of the actual traitor in a detailed manner that supplies all the specific information the reader needs to understand clearly the truth of the story. One's admiration for the profoundly moral Picqualt and his ceaseless struggle to exonerate the innocent, bring the guilty to justice and with it all refrain from revealing state secrets grows with each page. At great cost to himself and risking the ruination of his life, he pursues every available path.

A genuine thriller, surprising since we know exactly where it's all going, this keeps the reader's attention in a masterful way. Any reader of historical fiction will enjoy this, and maybe some of those who love action-adventure stuff, too."

Nan T. Is Recommending:

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