‘Twin Peaks’ Book Coming Soon

The 1990s cult TV show “Twin Peaks” is making a comeback — not only onscreen, but also in the form of a paperback.

According to Huffington Post, the hit television series will be rebooted on Showtime in 2016, and along with that will come a new book, updating fans on the lives of the characters and “unresolved plot holes.”

The book is due to be released by Flatiron Books next year and will include details about what’s happened to the characters in the last 25 years between the original and new TV series. It’s also expected to have more details on the mystery “at the heart” of the series.

This is not the first time the show has released accompanying books, and it seems to have worked for them in the past. After all, the close release of the book and the show is a good marketing plan.

New James Bond Book Coming in 2015

Most of us book nerds know most good television and movies come from books. Such is the case with one of the most famous spies of all time: Bond, James Bond. And come 2015, there will be plenty more where that came from.

According to Entertainment Weekly, writer Anthony Horowitz will pen a new James Bond novel to be released next year. The novel will be developed from an unpublished story written by the original author of the 007 series, Ian Fleming. The story, entitled Murder on Wheels, will be renamed Project One and will revolve around Bond and race cars — because he always needs a little action, right?

The estate of Ian Fleming gave Horowitz the story to use, and apparently both the estate and Horowitz have done this before. The estate has given several stories to authors to develop into novels and publish, and Horowitz has also written Sherlock Holmes stories, with the permission of Sherlock author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Nothing like rewriting history, huh?

Lois Lane YA Novel On the Way

Not many care about Lois Lane when there’s the Supermanish Clark Kane flying around. But that’s about to change.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the Superman comic character Lois Lane will soon have her own full-length young adult novel. Entitled Lois Lane: Fallout, the book is the first to tell the story of Lane, an investigative reporter who grew up as an army brat.

Switch Press in association with DC Entertainment will publish the YA novel, which will tell the story of the teenage version of Lane, as enters her new high school in Metropolis, where trouble is on the way. That’s also where she befriends someone with the screen name “SmallvilleGuy.” You can imagine what happens next.

No word on when the book will be released.

Movie vs. Book: Gone Girl

The morning of Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth anniversary starts off normally enough. Nick heads to work at the bar he owns in a small Missouri town, leaving his wife, Amy, at home to do whatever it is housewives do. But this day is unlike any other. Nick comes home to find Amy’s missing. The house is in disarray, as if there were a struggle, and no one seems to know where Amy is.

Suddenly, Nick and Amy’s anniversary turns into a police-assisted hunt for Amy. The story about the beautiful missing housewife quickly goes national, and as time passes, the media and people across the country peg Nick as a killer. He smiles when he should appear sad. He’s kind to others, instead of pissed off or upset. Not to mention, his alibi is shoddy, and police determine that the crime scene looks staged.

While all this is going on, we get a glimpse into Amy’s version of the story through flashback scenes dictated by Amy’s diary entries. We see both the happy times Nick and Amy had together (their first kiss! Nick’s proposal!) and the bad times (Nick hit Amy! She wants to buy a gun!). So what happened to Amy? And did Nick have something to do with it?

What I’ve detailed for you is a summary of both the novel and the movie. I say that because the movie stays so true to the book, thanks to the fact that Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn also wrote the film’s screenplay. Not only does the movie follow the book to a T, the casting is also incredibly on point. Ben Affleck is a natural at Nick Dunne’s aloof, smug charm. A relatively unknown Rosamund Pike plays Amy in an exceptionally sharp, twisted, scary way. Neil Patrick Harris as one of Amy’s former lover’s and Tyler Perry as Nick’s lawyer round out the perfectly-casted bunch.

There are a few minor changes, but it’s hard to describe them and not reveal any spoilers about the story. I do, however, think it’s safe to say that one thing the movie does differently is make the viewer hate Amy more than Nick at the end. The movie makes you sympathize with Nick and feel bad for the poor bastard. But when I finished the novel, I hated both Nick and Amy equally by the end. Aside from that, the casting, the direction, the music and sound, and the overall opportunity to see this story rather than picture it your head might make it even more twisted and creepy than the book. And I mean that in a good way.

Get Gone Girl ( Movie Tie-In Edition) for $7.86.

Review: Astonish Me

Recap: Talk about scandal taking center stage. When Joan Joyce, a young up-and-coming professional ballerina, meets famed international ballet superstar Arslan Rusakov, a brief romance sets them on a journey neither of them expect. They meet in the 1970’s in Paris, as Joan is working to get her not-so-perfect ballet feet wet. While Arslan is one of the most talented, Joan is not. But there is something about her that astonishes Arslan, and he relies on her to help him deflect and smuggle him into the United States. Their romance ends soon thereafter, as does Joan’s career. She teaches ballet, but leaves Arslan, her best friend Elaine, and the world of professional dance behind.

Joan goes on to marry and raise a son, who has his own knack for ballet, in California. She teaches him ballet, as well as her son’s friend/neighbor/crush. The kids become points of pride for Joan, proving her to be a talent when it comes to teaching ballet. But both Joan and her husband have mixed emotions when faced with the idea that the children may one day surpass Joan with more successful professional dance careers, and that it could lead Joan back to Arslan at some point. While the act of ballet is physical, dance weighs heavier on the hearts and minds of these families than it does on their feet and muscles.

Analysis: When this novel came out earlier this year, all any of the reviews talked about was what a phenomenal writer author Maggie Shipstead was. Each review mentioned her debut novel, Seating Arrangements — which I immediately borrowed from a friend — and said that Astonish Me wasn’t quite as good as Seating Arrangements, but was a very close second. I have to agree.

Like Seating Arrangements, Astonish Me tells an intricate story of a family whose lives revolve around a certain categorized system of social class. In Seating Arrangements, it’s that of a prep school/Ivy League crowd. In Astonish Me, it’s a ballet crowd. And similarly to her debut novel, Astonish Me relishes in the scandals amongst its characters, in the complex weaving of relationships, almost as twisted as a pair of lace-up pointe shoes. But Shipstead’s writing makes the story less trashy and more scandalous in the way that many love-driven classic novels are written, like those by Edith Wharton or Jane Austen.

MVP: Joan’s best friend, Elaine. Even though Joan is more of the titular character, the woman around whom the novel revolves and the woman who “astonishes,” she comes across as mostly plain, drab, and unremarkable throughout the novel. Elaine is the strongest female character of the book, an independent woman who both knows and does what she wants.

Get Astonish Me in hardcover for $16.41.

Or on your Kindle for $10.99.