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Here are some handpicked titles from our Coming Attractions page. Want to include your book? Just read our Share Your New Book with GalleyCat Readers post for all the details.

Imagine There’s a Heaven by Jim Austerman: “‘Heaven. It’s there. It’s real. It’s the same as on earth, but different.’ These are some of the first words this middle-aged man slowly whispered after coming out of a twelve day coma following cardiac arrest and triple-by-pass surgery.” (April 2013)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The New York Foundling, a social services organization for children and families, will create a book review column in May.

Book reviewer Celia McGee will write the weekly column, focusing on new and forthcoming books. It will start when the organization relaunches its website next month. If you are interested in submitting your book, McGee is looking for the following kinds of books to review:

- Grades K-2
- Grades 3-5, fiction and nonfiction
- Middle School, fiction and nonfiction
As well as
- High School, YA and appropriate adult fiction and nonfiction
- Books for young, often single parents, on child-rearing, self help, personal advice, and also relevant fiction and other nonfiction
- General parenting books and related nonfiction, including about New York city and surroundings, for parents of all ages. Some relevant fiction may be included as well.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“God was not dead, but the Muse was extremely unwell,” wrote Renata Adler in Speedboat, describing literary and film criticism in the 1970s.

New York Review Books will republish the book tomorrow (March 19), bringing the classic book back into print. The book collects a series of thoughts and episodes in the life of a journalist in New York City. Her sharp criticism of book and movie reviews still apply more than 35 years later:

The physical-assault metaphor had taken over the reviews. “Guts,” never much of a word outside the hunting season, was a favorite noun in literary prose. People were said to have or to lack them, to perceive beauty and make moral distinctions in no other place. “Gut-busting” and “gut-wrenching” were accolades. “Nerve-shattering,” “eye-popping,” “bone-crunching”—the responsive critic was a crushed, impaled, electrocuted man. “Searing” was lukewarm. Anything merely spraining or tooth-extracting would have been only a minor masterpiece. “Literally,” in every single case, meant figuratively; that is, not literally. This film will literally grab you by the throat. This book will literally knock you out of your chair. “Presently” always meant not soon but now.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our Coming Attractions page. Want to include your book? Just read our Share Your New Book with GalleyCat Readers post for all the details.

Sticks, Stones, and Dragon Bones by Evelyn Ink: “A door that leads nowhere… A key to open it. A map of a land that doesn’t exist, and a monster that does.” (October 2012)

Dear Tiz by Aslaug Gørbitz: “This story is about two seventeen year old girls who live in two different centuries. They are connected in ways they have yet to discover. The men in their lives are chivalrous and honorable, not to mention multi-ethnic – the Italian, the Irishman, the American Indian and the Norwegian. There is true love, adventure, pioneering and a little magic involved. No wait, maybe it is the hand of God.” (January 2013)

Behind the Tears by Marita A. Hansen: “Everyone sees Ash as the toughest of the Rata brothers, the tall, tattooed man who is untouchable. But not many know of his past, of a tormented youth, which almost saw him take his own life.” (February 2013)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

VIDA: Women in Literary Arts have released a report entitled “Vida Count 2012″ revealing that male writers still outnumbered female writers in a number of major literary publications last year. Follow this link to see a three-year comparison.

This report tracks the statistics of gender balance among writers published at literary magazines around the country. They also looked at authors reviewed, book reviewers, and interviews at certain publications. The book review count included Harper’s (book reviews written by 3 women, 28 men), The New York Review of Books (book reviews written by 215 men, 40 women) and The New York Times Book Review (book reviews written by 327 women, 400 men). Here’s more from the report:

Let’s look at a few venues that have held steady or made calculable strides towards shaping a more egalitarian literary landscape via gender. The Boston Review, with its slightly heavier load of male reviewers, has made a dramatic improvement proportionately of who they review since we began. Threepenny is taking a slow but steady approach with incremental yearly steps up from 29 to 34 to 36.5% women published respectively. Poetry remains the most consistently equitable in its publishing practices, reaching a 45% height of women published in 2012: look to the poets! … We hope their editors will take notice and figure out how to make lasting strides as they proceed with their consideration practices into the rest of 2013. Publishers have also begun to take it upon themselves to publicly account for their own numbers. Places like Harvard Review, Drunken Boat and Tin House are counting their authors each year. We do not think the significant jump in female authors reviewed at Tin House is temporary; they have bared the change in their attention and practices for the public record. Readers and writers, please take note.

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Here are some handpicked titles from our Coming Attractions page. Want to include your book? Just read our Share Your New Book with GalleyCat Readers post for all the details.

The American Bride by Karla Darcy: “Cara continually falls under the scrutiny of Julian who despite his married state can’t take his eyes off the woman he doesn’t know is his bride.  She infuriates him and yet he finds his life and the lives of his wards are totally involved with this American upstart.” (November 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Blogger Matt Kahn has decided to read and review the bestselling book of the year throughout contemporary history, going back 100 years in his quest. Below, we’ve linked to free eBook copies of the first five books on his list…

Kahn will cover 94 books, starting with The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill. The site offers the fascinating opportunity to explore major books that are all but forgotten today. Check it out:

For this blog I plan, among other things, to read and review every novel to reach the number one spot on Publishers Weekly annual bestsellers list, starting in 1913. Beyond just a book review, I’m going to provide some information on the authors and the time at which these books were written in an attempt to figure out just what made these particular books popular at that particular time. I decided to undertake this endeavor as a mission to read books I never would have otherwise read, discover authors who have been lost to obscurity, and to see how what’s popular has changed over the last one hundred years. I plan to post a new review every Monday, with links, short essays, and the like between review posts.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Novelist Brian Allen Carr received a particularly mean-spirited one-star review on Amazon that ended with this spiteful comment: “You basically suck as an author and I hope you never publish a book again!!”

Instead of getting angry, Carr decided to embrace his one-star review status of Short Bus, hosting a contest to reward the reader who can deliver the best one-star review of his novel.

HTMLGiant has all the details: “he’s doing a ‘Lone Star’ contest: write the best 1-star review of the book by the end of February, and he’ll give you all three of his books, including the newest, Edie and the Low-Hung Hands (Small Doggies Press).”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Anybody who thinks literary criticism is dead should read this: the digital review copy community at NetGalley now has more than 100,000 members. 

AppNewser has more about the company’s growth:

Firebrand Technologies, the company that owns the digital galley site NetGalley, announced today that NetGalley now has more than 100,000 members reading its digital books. The company redesigned the site last fall, giving it a new look, making it easier to read on Kindle devices and adding more user tools. In addition to the growth, Firebrand has also announced four new hires…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Burned Bridges by Marguerite Ashton: “Newly sober and dating the man of her dreams, Traci Collins is ready to enjoy the good life, until her new best friend, Olivia Durning, confides a dreadful secret far worse than Traci could imagine. ” (October 2012)

Another Man’s Treasure by S.W. Hubbard: ”On a snowy Christmas Eve, a beautiful young mother goes out to buy a few last minute gifts and never returns…thirty years later, her daughter picks up her trail.” (October 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Lost and Found by Amy Shojai:”Animal behaviorist September Day has lost everything—husband murdered, career in ruins, confidence shot—and flees to Texas to recover. She’s forced out of hibernation when her nephew Steven and his autism service dog Shadow disappear in a freak blizzard.” (September 2012)

A Hide in Arran by Chris Reynolds:”Chris Reynolds effortlessly evokes the feel of Britain in the 1940′s in this tale of a lonely child who misses her big brother and her best friend who have both moved away. Fantasising about seeing her friend in a picture-book in the wilds of Arran, the little girl persuades her family to visit the island for their annual holiday.” (September 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Trove by David McGukin: “When the widow of Blackbeard’s heir finds herself unprepared to deal with his three hundred year old estate, ancient trusts quickly unravel, leaving her exposed with nothing but a haunting curse and a band of mutineers intent on her demise. In her world of vast riches, power, and deception, Luna Belle must navigate murky waters of modern piracy on a secreted Georgia coastal island, while fighting for her fortune, her sanity, and her life.” (August 2012)

Conspiracy of Silence by Glede Browne-Kabongo: ”She has the perfect life—and a secret worth killing for. Nina Kasai is a gorgeous, Ivy League educated executive who would do anything to keep her past a secret, even from her husband. Seventeen years ago, she ran for her life and the truth has been locked away in the pages of her hidden diary, and in the mind of a disturbed woman who will never tell—ever.” (September 2012)

Danse de la Folie by Sherwood Smith: “A light-hearted Regency folly, starring Miss Clarissa Harlowe who wants a quiet life-but falls in love with a smuggler, the marquess of St. Tarval. Tarval’s sister, Lady Kitty, is determined to write a dramatic Gothic to save her brother’s mortgaged estate-if she can reach London. Clarissa’s much-pursued cousin, Mr. Philip Devereaux, is inexplicably intrigued by Lady Kitty, who is doing her best to encourage the match between him and Clarissa, except that Clarissa is now betrothed to… Lord Wilburfolde. And so the madness of changing partners begins in the dance of love.” (September 2012)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Tokyo Hearts: A Japanese Love Story by Renae Lucas-Hall: “A fascinating exploration of life in modern-day Japan, Tokyo Hearts is a poignant love story that will catapult you directly onto the fashionable streets of this nation’s capital and into the hearts of Takashi and Haruka. Takashi is a young and popular university student who has fallen in love with his stylish and sophisticated friend Haruka. She is sweet and kind and adores shopping for high-end Japanese and Western brands. Every week, they meet up in the heart of Tokyo, enjoying each other’s company, and for Takashi, life is perfect. But the path to true love is never easy. When Takashi discovers that Haruka is seeing her wealthy ex-boyfriend from Kyoto, his life begins to turn upside down. This coming of age story traces the lives of Takashi and Haruka and their friends as they deal with young love and the ups and downs of growing up in Tokyo – truly one of the most stylish, energetic and exhilarating cities in the world.” (June 2012)

Twisted Complex: A Love Story by Elias L. Blondeau: “A young man moves in with his older sister in hopes of getting over an accident which claimed the lives of his parents and younger sister. But over the course of one Summer, he finds himself embroiled in a series of vicious child murders, a heavy relationship with a shady girl, and a sexual fascination which may cost him his sanity.” (July 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Lost the Plot by Paul Beck: “Complacent, asleep, ineffective, hypocritical. However you choose to describe it, the church simply isn’t working. In Lost the Plot, you get an in depth look at our failures and what we can do to fix them. Dive into what the Bible says about the early church and take a look at our own churches from the outside in.” (July 2012)

The Man With the Green Suitcase by Dee Doanes: ”The old man comes into people’s lives because it is important for them to experience the visions that he is somehow able to show them—visions that even he doesn’t understand. But whoever he connects with will go through a transformation that will change the course of their life, for better or worse. The old man has no memory of who he is or even what the suitcase holds. But one day he will find out all about his own secret and dark past…” (July 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After commenters left a series of abusive comments over The Dark Knight Rises reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, the site has shut down comments on the film. Rotten Tomatoes editor-in-chief Matt Atchity wrote a long post about the controversy.

Check it out: “If a critic often goes against the majority, but has well-reasoned arguments, it’s unlikely we’re going to ban them, at least not just for having a different opinion. We’re not looking for groupthink here … We’ll ban you for threats and hate speech — we’re trying to have fun here, so (to quote Wil Wheaton) don’t be a d***. And don’t try and argue about your right to free speech — this is a business, and we have the right to refuse service to anyone we feel like.”

He hinted that the network will move to a Facebook-based commenting system, forcing readers to identify themselves. “You’ll have to stand by your comments, just like a critic does,” he explained in the post. Online threats against reviewers could potentially harm all kinds of criticism. In the spirit of preserving independent criticism, we’ve linked to all the unfavorable reviews of The Dark Knight Rises below…

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We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending July 08, 2012–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at No. 6 in Paperback Fiction) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: “The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.”

(Debuted at #10 in Hardcover Fiction) Gold by Chris Cleave: “Kate and Zoe met at nineteen when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling—a sport that demands intense focus, blinding exertion, and unwavering commitment. They are built to exploit the barest physical and psychological edge over equally skilled rivals, all of whom are fighting for the last one tenth of a second that separates triumph from despair.” (July 2012)

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When Janet Maslin reviewed This Bright River by Patrick Somerville recently, the novelist discovered that the critic had misread a crucial and deliberately ambiguous moment in the novel.

Somerville explained the error in an essay for Salon: “I realized that Janet Maslin, who is not only one of the most accomplished critics in the world, but who is also the person who lifted my first novel, The Cradle, out of obscurity with a rave review three years before, had made a simple reading error within the first five pages of my novel. She‘d mixed up two characters. It was really important to not mix up those characters. And she never realized it.”

That could have been the end of the whole sad story, but a New York Times editor contacted Somerville through an email to one of his fictional characters. Read the whole email chain at Salon. The lovely email exchange ended with the newspaper printing a spoiler-free correction in the review.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Adopted Reality: A Memoir by Laura Dennis: “Spies, delusions, the Illuminati, oh my! In a September 11 memoir unlike any you’ve read, this thrilling, psychological adventure follows the ups and downs of bipolar, and examines relationships biological and adopted.” (June 2012)

The Beautiful Anthology: Essays, Stories, & Poems edited by Elizabeth Collins: “What is beauty? Why do women usually think they are not beautiful, and what do women (and men) find truly beautiful in life? These important questions are answered in this collection.” (June 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending June 24, 2012–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #3 in Children’s Illustrated) The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce with illustrations by William Joyce & Joe Bluhm: “Everything in Morris Lessmore’s life, including his own story, is scattered to the winds. But the power of story will save the day.” (June 2012)

(Debuted at #5 in Hardcover Fiction) A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers: “In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter’s college tuition, and finally do something great.” (June 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending June 17, 2012–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #2 in Hardcover Fiction) Mission to Paris by Alan Furst: “It is the late summer of 1938, Europe is about to explode, the Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie for Paramount France. The Nazis know he’s coming—a secret bureau within the Reich Foreign Ministry has for years been waging political warfare against France, using bribery, intimidation, and corrupt newspapers to weaken French morale and degrade France’s will to defend herself.” (June 2012)

(Debuted at #9 in Children’s Interest) The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens: “Kate, Michael, and Emma have been in one orphanage after another for the last ten years, passed along like lost baggage. Yet these unwanted children are more remarkable than they could possibly imagine. Ripped from their parents as babies, they are being protected from a horrible evil of devastating power, an evil they know nothing about.” (April 2012)

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Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Into This World by Sybil Baker: ”On the day Allison Morehouse walks off her job, her sister Mina calls from Korea, frantic and in tears. Determined to discover the truth about her adopted sister, Allison flies to Seoul, yet Mina—and Korea—are nothing like Allison imagines. Over the next three months, Allison and Mina will unearth thirty years of family secrets—and Allison will discover in Mina the sister she never embraced and in herself, the stronger woman she can be.” (May 2012)

Daemons in the Mist by Alicia Kat Dillman: ”Seventeen year old Patrick Connolly has been hopelessly infatuated with Nualla for years but he is all but invisible to her. Until, that is, he rescues her from a confrontation with her ex. Little does Patrick know he’s just set off a dangerous chain reaction that will thrust him into a world of life altering secrets and things that shouldn’t exist, because the fog and mist of San Francisco is concealing more than just buildings.” (May 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Simon Vector by Jak Holding: ”When Zodiac Battle Systems sends an investigator to Alpha Draconis, Ana Bolo is no less a prisoner than the cannibals, serial rapists, and mass murderers this frozen hell confines. Tasked to learn the fate of a secret project once concealed within the bowels of the prison, her corporate masters will kill her if she fails. But as she hunts for clues left behind by the suicidal genius, Doctor Thaddeus Kong, she realizes that Kong’s increasingly erratic logs point to a more sinister truth.” (April 2012)

Matinicus: An Island Mystery by Darcy Scott: ”Steeped in Maine island lore, this century-spanning double mystery pits a renegade fishing community against an unhappy child-bride of the 1820s, a defiant twenty-first-century teen, and a hard-drinking botanist—Dr. Gil Hodges—who escapes to the island of Matinicus to avoid a crazed ex-lover and verify a rumored 22 species of wild orchid, only to find himself hounded by the ghost of a child some two-hundred years dead. If Gil’s hoping for peace and quiet, he’s clearly come to the wrong place.” (May 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What is the worst book you’ve ever read?

Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic and author Michael Dirda held an epic “Ask Me Anything” interview at Reddit, fielding questions online from readers about self-publishing, Amazon and the worst books he ever reviewed.

At one point, he talked about the worst book he’d ever read. Check it out: “Judith Krantz‘s Dazzle. Even the sex in the book was boilerplate, a totally meretricious work. John Sutherland–a distinguished English authority on the novel and the best seller–once included Dazzle in his list of the 25 worst novels of the century.”

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We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending May 13, 2012–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #2 in Hardcover Fiction) In One Person by John Irving: “In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a ‘sexual suspect,’ a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of ‘terminal cases,’ The World According to Garp.” (May 2012)

(Debuted at #3 in Hardcover Fiction) Home by Toni Morrison: “Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he’s hated all his life.” (May 2012)

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The New Yorker has relaunched its literary blog with a new name and logo: Page-Turner.

The new blog will expand the work of the Book Bench, the magazine’s old books site. “Daily essays will be the blog’s mainstay, with books as an anchor for wide-ranging cultural comment,” explained the introductory post.

Check it out: “Our first day features an essay by Salman Rushdie on the spectre of censorship; a dissenting view on the immortality of “Death of a Salesman,” by Giles Harvey; Mary Norris on the subtle marvellousness of the medieval thorn; and Nick Thompson on the risks of the running life. Check back for interviews with fiction writers, staff reading lists, literary Shouts & Murmurs, cool-headed rants, barely checked enthusiasms, good-natured persiflage, and, with luck, lots of soft owls flying over the lane.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.