Anchor Books has talk radio, the tabloids and hip-hop blogs aflame about Queens Reign Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler by music journalist Ethan Browne, weeks before the 75,000-copy first printing arrives in stores November 27. The paperback original's revelations about who shot rap star 50 Cent, and about Jam Master Jay and Tupac Shakur, made the cover of hip-hop monthly Don Diva, scored two items on the New York Post's Page Six and prompted 50 cent to comment in a radio interview. Street teams in New York, Atlanta and L.A. will hand out flyers about the book when Get Rich or Die Tryin', the 50 Cent biopic, opens November 9.
Jonathan Burnham may not be at Miramax anymore, but the bestselling Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, which Burnham launched in 2003, will conclude this winter with Ptolemy's Gate. Miramax/Hyperion will print 250,000 copies of the latest, for a December 1 pub. A film of The Amulet of Samarkand, the first book of the trilogy, is currently in production, directed by Anthony Minghella.
Europa Editions, helmed by Carroll and Graf co-founder Kent Carroll,has its first indie bestseller, Elena Ferrante's Days of Abandonment, thanks to good reviews in the New York Times and the New Yorker. A second title, Cooking with Fernet Branca by 2004 Booker Prize nominee James Hamilton Paterson, has gotten the nod from Michael Dirda in the L.A. Times, and the New Yorker. Next up is the late French crime writer Jean-Claude Izzo's Total Chaos, which was reviewed in the November 6 New York Times.
Booksellers have been buzzing since BEA about Kevin Henkes's next Lilly picture book. Henkes, who won last year's Caldecott, read the text of Lilly's Big Day at the convention's Evening with Children's Booksellers to thunderous applause. Greenwillow has high hopes for it, planning a 500,000-copy first printing for a March 28 laydown.
