The Inner Sanctum

Perfect by New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins is on sale now! A companion novel to the bestselling book Impulse, Perfect is a deeply empathetic and riveting portrait of teens striving past the possible to be perfect—and their quest to let perfection go and follow their hearts.

Ellen’s new revamped site has a bunch of online assets include the video trailer, a video interview, an excerpt of the book, as well as video excerpts of the audiobook. Click to get to Ellen’s new YA focused site: http://ellenhopkins.com/YoungAdult/perfect/

Also, Banned Books Week is coming up on 9/25! Visit our Banned Book Weeks site for PDFs of Ellen’s manifesto and more! Visit: http://pages.simonandschuster.com/bannedbooksweek

Michael Vey, the new teen novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Richard Paul Evans is on sale today!

Richard is kicking off his tour with some major media, all happening today:

Glenn Beck’s Nationally Syndicated Radio program—live in-studio
GBTV (Glenn Beck’s syndicated internet show)—live in-studio
Radio Satellite Tour

Watch the trailer here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150260801012129

Read the first 100 pages and get more assets here: http://pages.simonandschuster.com/michaelvey/

MICHAEL VEY
Written by Richard Paul Evans
Publication Date: 8/9/11 (laydown)
Simon Pulse/Mercury Ink
ISBN: 9781451656503
Ebook ISBN: 9781451658224
$17.99, Ages 12 up

Dreams of Significant Girls by Christina Garcia (9781416979203), has just received this stellar review from The New York Times Book Review in the July 17th edition!

“Let’s call them the original Gossip Girls. In Cristina Garcia’s first young adult novel, three wealthy and adventurous ninth-grade girls from different worlds converge upon a Swiss boarding school for a summer of discovery…(DREAMS OF SIGNIFICANT GIRLS) takes you breathlessly and painfully back to the time when womanhood shimmered before you, always just out of reach, and you lunged for it, stupidly and bravely, with your first cigarette, your first kiss, your first swill of liquor, your first boy crush and your first girl crush.”

Breaking News!

The first teen novel from bestselling author Richard Paul Evans, Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25 (9781451656503), is on sale 8/9/11!

There is a lot to say about this fantastic novel, but instead of hearing from me, I thought it would be better to let the author do the honors.

From Richard Paul Evans:

Four years ago, I wrote a novel called The Gift, the story of a young boy with the power to heal. A superhero. It was the most fun I’d had writing in years. About a year later an idea for a book began forming in my mind. The novel had everything I wanted to read when I was a boy. The main character, Michael Vey, was shy, small for his age, and moved around a lot, and he had Tourette’s syndrome—all of which pretty much describes my childhood.

But Michael also had a special gift: He was born with electric powers.

I have already shared Michael Vey with over five hundred middle school students from three different schools, in three different cities. The response has been, pardon the pun, electric. Not since the The Christmas Box have I seen such an overwhelmingly positive reaction to one of my books.

On a personal level, I’m very pleased to have created a protagonist with Tourette’s syndrome. I have TS. So does my son. In our test schools, the teachers reported that Michael Vey had helped students suffering with disabilities, from Tourette’s to Asperger’s, feel more accepted.

Like all my novels, Michael Vey, ultimately, is about hope. It’s about the power and beauty each of us has inside, even when our outsides tell us different. It’s a story, not about darkness, dysfunction, or dystopian worlds, but about light, loyalty, and friendship. In short, Michael Vey is the kind of message I want to deliver to today’s youth.

You can read the eGalley by clicking this link: http://www.galleygrab.com/?asset_url=9781451661835

“When I first heard the premise of Untold Story, I knew I would be intrigued. Princess Diana is a hugely heroic figure to those of us who watched every second of her wedding, her funeral, and, more recently, her son’s wedding—and felt for a woman whose pain we could only imagine. In Untold Story, Monica Ali revives our fascination. I was hooked from the start, trying to recall every last detail about Diana, making connections between fiction and fact, then losing myself in pure imagination. With exquisite timing, Ali keeps us on the edge of our seats fearing for Lydia, rooting for her, cheering when she outwits the photographer who stalks her. Ali’s subtlety adds power to the tale; never once does she mention Diana—or Charles, or William, or Dodi—by name. Secondary voices are vivid, adding urgency and depth. I have never felt so protective of a protagonist. Ali’s Lydia is haunted—but determined and increasingly strong. She makes friends—true friends—for the first time in her life, and though trust is forever a challenge to her, we feel comforted. In that regard, Untold Story is about triumph and hope. This exquisite blend of fact and fiction makes for a riveting read. As should any good book, it leaves much to think about.” —Barbara Delinsky

UNTOLD STORY (Scribner, Hardcover: 9781451635485, eBook: 9781451635515, eAudio: 9781442345447) is available this Tuesday, June 28.

Like Curtis Sittenfeld in American Wife and Joyce Carol Oates in Blonde, Monica Ali has created a riveting novel based on the life of a cultural icon. Princess Diana’s life and marriage were both fairytale and nightmare rolled into one. Adored by millions, in her personal life she suffered rejection, heartbreak, and betrayal. Surrounded by glamour and glitz and the constant attentions of the press, she fought to carve a meaningful role for herself in helping the needy and dispossessed. The contradictions and pressures of her situation fueled her increasingly reckless behavior. She was, as Ali has said, “a gorgeous bundle of trouble,” but her stature and her connection with her public never ceased to grow.

Although turning 75 years old this month, Margaret Mitchell’s American classic, Gone with the Wind (Scribner, Trade Paperback: 9781451635621), isn’t going anywhere. Check out Craig Wilson’s piece in USA Today celebrating the still beloved novel. To commemorate Gone with the Wind ’s birthday, the Atlanta History Society is running an exhibit through September 5, 2011 at the Margaret Mitchell House, in which four of the book’s original chapters will be on display.

NPR’s Pat Conroy writes the preface to the new edition. Read an excerpt here!

For members of book clubs, check out the new Reading Group Guide!

See below for an update on upcoming publicity for all
Simon & Schuster adult imprints in this week’s edition of the SOURCE!
Some highlights include:

IN THE NEWS

THE LONGEST WAR, Peter Bergen
9780743278935, Free Press, $28.00
Time magazine feature, on stands May 5
The New Republic cover story, on stands May 5
NBC-TV/ “TODAY Show,” May 6
The Washington Post article, May 7
CNN-TV/ “Footsteps of bin Laden” documentary, based on THE OSAMA I KNOW, by Peter Bergen, May 7 & May 8

BUZZ-WORTHY REVIEW
THE YEAR WE LEFT HOME, Jean Thompson
9781439175880, Simon & Schuster, $25.00
New York Times Book Review, May 8:
“…an extraordinarily warm-hearted novel whose impressive humanity and lightness of touch refresh some narrative elements so abundantly precedented that most fiction writers would have been afraid to go near them.”

THE YEAR WE LEFT HOME: A Novel by Jean Thompson
Simon & Schuster, Hardcover: 9781439175880, e-Book, 9781439175910

“The Ericksons are an ordinary family, unhappy in their own unique, Tolstoy-pleasing way. Rural Iowans sprung from generations of oxen-strong Norwegian stock bred on ”privation, thrift, cleanliness, and joyless charity,” the clan at the center of Jean Thompson’s spare, startlingly resonant new novel remain inextricably linked to the place that made them, even as they reach for lives richer in both geography and purpose.

The Year We Left Home leapfrogs across nearly four decades, following the Erickson offspring — along with their skittering oddball of a cousin Chip — from 1973 to nearly present day: high school beauty–turned–disillusioned housewife Anita; restlessly ambitious Ryan; and willful baby of the family Torrie, daily plotting her escape to Berkeley or Bryn Mawr. (A fourth sibling, laconic firstborn Blake, hovers on the perimeter until the final pages.)

When the novel begins, the Vietnam War is just limping to a close and an economic crisis looms. Family farms across Iowa are foreclosed on and swallowed up by starch-collared men like Anita’s banker husband, while Ryan is a world away in Chicago, learning to shed his small-town skin and dating dangerously un-Lutheran girls with jangling ankle bracelets, and Chip pinballs from city to city, ”a puppet on busted strings.”

It’s Torrie, in the end, with her swinging ponytail, scratchy Bob Dylan records, and strident self-discipline, to whom fate (or, more accurately, Thompson’s hand in guiding it) is the least kind — though ultimately, perhaps, most forgiving. But even minor characters receive the full attention of the author’s prodigious talents; each one is drawn so vividly that they never feel less than utterly real. To say too much more would ruin the slow, lovely unfurling of Home, a string of largely unremarkable moments told with extraordinary grace. A–”

Get the Reading Group Guide here

FROM THIS MOMENT ON by Shania Twain
Atria, Hardcover: 9781451620740, e-Book:  9781451620764, CD: 9781442341166

In FROM THIS MOMENT ON superstar Shania Twain writes a poignant, heartfelt, and beautifully told account of her hard-scrabble childhood, rise to worldwide fame, and recent personal tragedies.

Watch for Shania Twain on…
Nationally Syndicated/ “Oprah,” May 3
NBC-TV/ “TODAY,” May 4
NBC-TV/ Satellite Tour, May 5
ABC-TV/ “Nightline,” May 5
OWN-TV/ “Why Not? With Shania Twain,” debuts May 8




POPULAR CRIME:Reflections on the Celebration of Violenceby Bill James
Scribner, Hardcover: 9781416552734, e-Book: 9781439182727

POPULAR CRIME: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

Celebrated writer, Bill James followed true crime throughout his life and has been interested in writing a book on the topic for decades. Now with POPULAR CRIME,  James narrates a fascinating tour through murder from the 1600s to the present day.

Watch for Bill James on…
Comedy Central/ “The Colbert Report,” May 5
NPR/ “Weekend Edition,” May 7

Read The Boston Globe feature here
Read an excerpt here

If any of these fantastic blurbs catch your interest, send Wendy.Sheanin@simonandshuster.com for a bound galley!

BUILDING BLUEPRINTS FOR BETTER GIRLS
Elissa Schappell
Simon & Schuster, September 2011

“Elissa Schappell writes earthquakes into existence—these stories will make you laugh until you’re hoarse and sob, too, often within one perfectly rendered, unforgettable scene. Schappell reminds us that we don’t have to look far afield for exotic, complex, hilarious and tragic stories—her rendering of women’s inner lives is fresh and necessary. Her humor is the flashlight she shines into the deepest, darkest, truest aspects of her character’s experiences.”

—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia

THIS BURNS MY HEART
Samuel Park
Simon & Schuster, July 2011

“This Burns My Heart is quietly stunning—a soft, fierce story that lingers in the mind. Samuel Park is a deft and elegant writer; this is a very exciting debut.”

—Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry

POPULAR CRIME: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence
Bill James
Scribner, May 2011

“I would read Bill James on anything. I would read him on the price of burlap in Des Moines. Yet here, as with baseball, he has found a subject worthy of his obsession. Popular Crime is the best kind of guilty pleasure: sure to inspire countless bar-stool digressions, and brimming with arguments about why these tabloid stories, and the ways we often misunderstand them, actually matter. James may be our foremost forensic historian.”

—Ben McGrath

WUNDERKIND
Nikolai Grozni
Free Press, September 2011

“Wunderkind is a gift for all senses. Nikolai Grozni’s shimmering, visual & visceral prose unfurls like music.”
–Patti Smith

NOTHING DAUNTED: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West
Dorothy Wickenden
Scribner, June 2011

“A superb, stirring book. Through the eyes of two spirited and resourceful women from the civilized East, Wickenden makes the story of the American West engaging and personal. A delight to read.”–Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief

See below for an update on upcoming publicity for all
Simon & Schuster adult imprints in this week’s edition of the SOURCE!

Some highlights include:

IN THE NEWS

A COVERT AFFAIR, Jennet Conant
9781439163528, Simon & Schuster, $28.00
9781442341913, CD, $39.00
Read the great USA Today feature here
Listen to interview on NPR’s “The Takeaway” here
Watch Conant on NBC’s “TODAY” here
Read the Slate.com review here

SPOKEN FROM THE HEART, Laura Bush
9781439155219, Scribner, $18.00
9781442305205, CD, $29.99
Read the New York Times Magazine profile here