British author Andrew Grant hit the thriller scene in a big way with his 2009 debut, Even. Starring rogue spy David Trevellyan, the novel was a favorite of Whodunit columnist Bruce Tierney, among others, and marked the launch of a series that will continue in May with Die Twice. Recently Grant traveled from his home in Birmingham, England, to participate in a conference in Birmingham, Alabama. Here, he gives a behind-the-scenes look at the weekend’s events.

Half an hour from the airport, bogged down in heavy traffic, threading our way through the lattice of raised, sweeping concrete highways towards Birmingham city centre.  I was starting to feel right at home.  But this wasn’t spaghetti junction, and we weren’t in the heartland of England.  We were in Birmingham, Alabama, on our way to the Murder in the Magic City writing conference—followed by the annual Murder on the Menu dinner in nearby Wetumpka—over the weekend of February 6 and 7. The first included talks by authors, featuring best-selling writers S.J. Rozan and C.J. Box on Saturday, and the second was a ‘moving feast’ with the same 16 crime fiction authors on Sunday.

Andrew Grant (front left) and his fellow authors strike a pose.

Both days offered a wonderful opportunity to meet enthusiastic readers, talk to other writers and listen to a wide variety of stimulating and informative panels.  I’d be hard pressed to say which I enjoyed more, but was delighted to part of two evenings that were not only enjoyable, but which raised funds for two very worthwhile causes—the national Crime Lab project, and the Wetumpka Public Library.

—Andrew Grant

I am apparently a rare creature—a beer-drinking book club member. While my fellow book clubbers are sipping Chardonnay, I’m happily chugging down a cold beer, preferably a Bud Light (my beer of choice).
So imagine my surprise at the outcry that’s greeted the Super Bowl commercial in which a Bud-loving guy crashes an all-female book club meeting. Who can blame the guy, after all? He spots a bowl of ice-cold Bud on a table and decides to join the group with scintillating discussion questions like this one: “So, what’s the story?”

Ed Champion, among others, is outraged, describing the spot as “Madison Avenue Misogyny.” He finds the ad sexist, anti-reading and way too sexually suggestive. To which I can only reply: c’mon, lighten up! The commercial was meant to be funny, and to me at least, it was. Also, as some commentators have pointed out, the ladies at the book club were the ones who set out the bottles of Bud (go girls!). They were ready to kick back with a beer and a good book and enjoy a conversation with friends. Not a bad idea from my perspective, and a not a bad way to portray books and reading. It’s the guy who comes off as an dim-witted lout who can’t follow the discussion.

Now if I could just get my own book club to change its name from “Wine, Women & Words” to something that’s more inclusive for beer drinkers like me.

It’s a big week for Ally Carter!

Her YA art caper novel, Heist Society, hits stores today, and you can read all about it in an interview on BookPage.com. I talked to Carter (also the author of the bestselling Gallagher Girls series) about the book in December and am excited that teens can finally read the book for themselves. (Imagine if Julia Roberts’ and George Clooney’s characters in Ocean’s 11 had a daughter. Who staged a huge heist as a teenager. That would be Kat, the star of Heist Society.)

Carter was a lot of fun to talk to (In response to “How to you feel about Valentine’s Day?” she answered: “Valentine’s Day is the day before all the chocolates go on sale”), so yesterday I was happy to see that Publisher’s Lunch reported a major film rights deal concerning Heist Society. The film rights were optioned to Warner Brothers for seven figures. Denise Di Novi (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) is slated to produce.

On her blog, Carter wrote: “The whole time I was writing Heist I always thought of it as a movie. More than once I’ve said that it’s far more cinematic than anything I’ve ever done. But what do I know, right? I also think cake is a well-balanced breakfast, so I’m wrong. A lot. . . At the end of the day we ended up signing with Warner Brothers and the talented Denise DiNovi as the producer. The screenplay will be written by the fabulous Shauna Cross (who wrote Whip It and the screenplay for If I Stay).” She also reminded readers that a film option is not a guarantee that a movie will get made—but it’s a step in the right direction.

So commenters: Who would you pick to play Kat, the daughter of notorious art thieves, or her love interest Hale? What’s your favorite heist book?

HCI's Vows line will create romance novels based on true love stories.

HCI Books, the company that publishes the Chicken Soup books, announced today that they have created a “new subgenre” of romance novels: fantasy meets reality. (When I read about this, I’ll admit that the first thing that popped into my head is a line from David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice: “It’s these real-life dramas that tend to draw a larger audience. Why? I chalk it up to five simple words we use in every print or televised promotion. Five words: ‘Based Upon a True Story.’”)

The idea is that real-life couples can share a “sexy, steamy, bigger-than-life, or just plain worthwhile love story” and romance authors will write a novel based on the truth. The line of books will be called “Vows,” and book one, Hard to Hold, comes out in October 2010.

Michael and Anne: the real couple behind "Hard to Hold"

Written by Julie Leto, Hard to Hold is about a woman who falls in love with a man with Tourette’s Syndrome. The pub copy also alludes to a second hurdle in the relationship. My curiosity got the best of me, and I searched the couple’s names online. Turns out they had the lead wedding story in the Sunday New York Times in August, so you can get the juicy details now, if you’d like.

The cheesy factor is certainly amped in the Vows books. (“When fantasy meets reality anything can happen. Believe it. It’s true.”) And as someone who spends hours a week engrossed in fiction, I take issue with the line from HCI’s promotional copy asserting that “the best things in life—and in romance—are real.” (Father Ralph and Meggie are real, too… to me!)

But I can still recognize that this is a very clever concept that’s perfectly suited for the age of Facebook and Google stalking and The Bachelor. When I finish a book, I love to find out everything I possibly can about the author. With the Vows books you’ll be able to do the same with the main characters. Plus, their story will keep on going when you finish the novel, which is an interesting idea.

What do you think, readers? Are you more interested in a romance novel that’s Based Upon a True Story—is truth stranger (or rather, steamier) than fiction? Or are romance plots best developed in a writer’s imagination?

For some traditional romance, check out Christie Ridgway’s February column in BookPage.

Young adult author Barry Lyga recently signed a deal with Little, Brown for a book that Publisher’s Marketplace described as “‘Dexter’ meets ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ for teens, about a teen boy who uses his killer instinct, inherited from his serial killer father, to help solve a series of gruesome murders.” The book, I HUNT KILLERS, will be published in spring 2012.

Lyga is a rising star in the field of teen fiction, with four YA novels under his belt, all set in the town of South Brook, Maryland. I wonder if I HUNT KILLERS will take place in South Brook as well — and if so, should fans of his earlier books fear for the lives of their favorite characters? But even if the place and people are all new, Lyga’s ability to create fully realized and believable characters will no doubt have me hiding under the covers with a flashlight, frantically turning the pages to find out who survives.

Related in BookPage: A Q&A with Lyga about his most recent book, Goth Girl Rising.

And a question for readers: What was the scariest book you read as a teenager?

Libba Bray

We were happy to hear that Libba Bray has signed a contract with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers to write a new YA series for major bucks—$2 million, rumor has it. Editor Megan Tingley (who also publishes Stephenie Meyer) will be working with Bray on The Diviners, a trilogy set in the 1920s. Bray describes the series as “a wild new ride full of dames and dapper dons, jazz babies and Prohibition-defying parties, conspiracy and prophecy—and all manner of things that go bump in the neon-drenched night.”

Bray’s success comes on the heels of winning the Printz Medal for Going Bovine, a picaresque tale of a teenage boy searching for a cure for mad cow disease, but she is also known for her atmospheric Victorian-era series that started with A Great and Terrible Beauty and contains supernatural elements.

One mystery: in our interview with Bray, she told us her work-in-progress was something quite different, “a satire about a group of teen beauty queens whose plane crashes on a deserted island. Sort of Lord of the Flies as channeled by P.J. O’Rourke and [National Lampoon writer] Doug Kenney.” Though we’re eager to see what she makes of the 1920s, we’re hoping this intriguing project will also see the light of day!

Congratulations to Julia, winner of our February fiction giveaway. To enter the contest, readers had to tell us which book they most want to read from our February issue. Here’s what Julia wrote:

Julia was not alone in looking forward to Brava, Valentine. Many readers favored Trigiani’s series, which you can read about here and here.

Keep your eyes on The Book Case for more giveaways!

All you have to do is look at our February cover to know we’re excited about Valentine’s Day here at BookPage. To celebrate even more, we’re giving away a box of beautiful picture books—a perfect gift for any child. The collection features both board books for babies and picture books for young readers, including:

• Everyone Says I Love You illustrated by Beegee Tolpa (a fabulous pop-up book with “I Love You” translations and pronunciations from around the world)
• I Love it When. . . illustrated by Anne Keenan Higgins (it comes with 75 stickers!)
• Spot’s Valentine by Eric Hill
• Sugar Cookies: Sweet Little Lessons on Love by Amy Krouse Ronsenthal
• Happy Valentine’s Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond (from the “If You Give a. . .” series)
• The Great Valentine’s Day Mix-up illustrated by Saxton Moore
• Love by Rosemary Wells (from the series about lovable bunnies Baby Max and Ruby)
• Henry in Love by Peter McCarty and Jane and Brooke Dyer

To enter to win, leave a note in the comments: What’s your favorite love story? Deadline: Monday at 10 a.m., so we can get these books in the mail in time for February 14! U.S. entries only, please.

Related in BookPage: See our Valentine’s Day coverage (relationship guides and memoirs, romance column and more) in the February print edition.

Jill McCorkle

Yesterday on Twitter we asked if an adult author can cross over to children’s books (prompted by an article in The Guardian).

Here’s another question for you. Does popular fiction translate on the stage?

If you loved Lee Smith’s The Last Girls or Jill McCorkle’s Going Away Shoes, you may want to make a trip to NYC: Paul Fergusen has adapted their stories into a play called Good Ol’ Girls, which seeks to celebrate “childhood through old age with big hair and bigger hearts.” Music is by Marshall Chapman and Matraca Berg, and previews start Feb. 8.

Lee Smith

BookPage columnist Julie Hale dubbed Smith “the mistress of modern Southern literature” and The Last Girls a “sassy classic.”  McCorkle has been called an “acute observer of the foibles of domestic life.”  What do you think—will their stories be a hit in an Off-Broadway production?

Related in BookPage: Read an interview with Smith.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
Viking, March 18, 2010

Debut author (and professional physicist) Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers has been an international sensation, selling more than 1 million copies in Italy. On March 18, it will hit shelves in the U.S. That I read the book in a timeframe of 36 hours should tell you all you need to know, but I’ll write a bit more. In alternating chapters, the book is from the point of view of Alice and Mattia over a period of 24 years. Both are haunted by childhood disasters, and both are lonely misfits, trapped within neuroses and obsessions. They are drawn to one another because—in the mind of Mattia, who is a brilliant mathematician—they are “twin primes.” Read the excerpt below to learn why.

Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they’d been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn’t do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.

In his first year at university, Mattia had learned that, among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. . .

Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other. He had never told her that.

Related in BookPage: Can’t wait for March 18? Read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, about a boy with “the capacity to calculate every prime number up to 7,057, but an utter inability to express anger, love or fear.”