Fiction & Poetry

• Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coet­zee (Viking)
• The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead)
• My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru (Dutton)
• The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin, Translated by Andrew Bromfield (Viking)

Nonfiction:

• Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman (The Penguin Press)
• Bacardi and the Long Fight For Cuba: The Biography of A Cause by Tom Gjelten (Viking)
• The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin)
• Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World by Samantha Power (The Penguin Press)
• Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright (The Penguin Press)
• Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris (The Penguin Press)

School Library Journal selected nine Penguin Group (USA) titles as part of their Best Books 2008. Of the more than 5000 books reviewed in SLJ's pages in 2008, the 67 books selected stood out as having distinctive voices, singular vision, and/or innovative approaches.

Adult Books for Teens

• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)
• What I Was by Meg Rosoff (Viking)
• American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau by Bill Mckibben, ed. (Library of America)
• Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh (Penguin)

• Sandy's Circus: A Story about Alexander Calder by Tanya Lee Stone, illus. by Boris Kulikov (Viking)

• Paper Towns by John Green (Dutton)
• The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson, illus. by Kevin Hawkes (Dutton)
• Impossible by Nancy Werlin (Dial)

• Christopher Counting by Valeri Gorbachev illus. by author (Philomel)

Do the Right Thing by Mike Huckabee (Sentinel) debuted last week on The New York Times bestseller list at #5, and this week, moved up a position to #4, as his successful 56-city bus tour continues. Huge crowds have been turning out for his events, ranging from 300 to 800+ people. 600+ fans showed up at a store in Tulsa at 7am on a Saturday morning.

National media continues, both conservative and mainstream. You can catch him next week, when he appears on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," and this Saturday he will be taping his Fox News weekend show "Huckabee" from the Books-A-Million in Columbia, South Carolina, preceding his booksigning there. The bookstore crowd will double as the show's studio audience.

To promote the book and the tour, the Governor's team created shirts for his bus tour staff (pictured), which are being given away to people who donate a certain amount to his political action committee, Huckpac, and also available for sale on his website.

Denis Leary's flurry of publicity for Why We Suck (Viking), currently #7 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction list in its second week, continued this week in Los Angeles. After a visit with David Letterman on Thanksgiving and greeting 600+ fans at at Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ on Friday, Denis hit the West Coast. Stops at the NFL Network (12/1), the "Bonnie Hunt Show" (12/2), "Jimmy Kimmel" (12/3), "Best Damn Sports Show" (12/3) and, of course, "Good Day LA" (12/2) were punctuated with two more huge booksignings at Booksoup and Barnes & Noble, The Grove. In Chicago, Denis will be interviewed for "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!," NPR's most hilarious show (12/4) and also signing at Borders on Michigan Avenue. In addition, he appeared on "The Rachael Ray Show" on December 4th.

Check out the photo above featuring Denis at his Staten Island signing, where a team of on-duty firefighters snuck away from their post to catch Denis in action!

Watch a trailer for Why We Suck on the Penguin website.

Clive and Dirk Cussler launched their national tour for Arctic Drift (G. P. Putnam's Sons) with a major event at Poisoned Pen in their hometown of Phoenix (pictured). They have since been on the road, bringing in large, enthusiastic crowds for events in Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, with more events still to come in Ft. Worth, Houston and St. Louis.

Penguin Young Readers Group just returned from the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Conference. Held in San Antonio, Texas, the show was extremely successful, with strong attendance, great author presence, and fantastic signings with long lines. Here are some of the highlights:

Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and the upcoming young readers edition, was a keynote presenter and spoke to an audience of over 2000 captivated teachers. Afterwards, Penguin Adult hosted a two hour signing and gave away copies of Three Cups of Tea, galleys of the young reader edition and F&Gs of the picture book, Listen to the Wind. Penguin also promoted the groundbreaking Three Cups of Tea Community Read program which offers communities the unprecedented opportunity to read and discuss a book at every reading level.

Laurie Halse Anderson, awarding winning author of Speak and the upcoming Wintergirls (March 2009) received the ALAN award for outstanding contribution in the field of adolescent literature. Laurie gave an inspiring speech while accepting her medal and received a standing ovation from a crowd of over 500 young adult librarians.

You can read an interview with Laurie Halse Anderson here.

Jacqueline Woodson, author of the 2008 Newbery Honor book, Feathers, was the Middle Level Luncheon speaker and had an audience of 300 educators. Tomie dePaola spoke to 450 educators at the Books for Children Luncheon.

Check out an interview with Jacqueline Woodson, and also listen to her discuss Feathers on the Penguin Podcast.

John Green, author of The New York Times bestseller, Paper Towns, and Joan Bauer, author of critically acclaimed Peeled, were keynote presenters at the ALAN workshop and spoke to audiences of over 500 young adult educators.

Avery's The Sweet Melissa Baking Book Named one of Top Ten Cookbooks of 2008 by NPR

NPR's "Weekend Edition" named The Sweet Melissa Baking Book (published by Avery earlier this year) as one of the best cookbooks of 2008, stating, "Melissa's bakery in Brooklyn is the sort of place people go to lick their wounds, nurse their passions, and reward their little victories." Now all the pleasure of eating at Sweet Melissa can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home with this cookbook. To see the entire NPR article, click here.

Roll up your sleeves this holiday season and try one of Sweet Melissa's famous recipes for Chocolate Orange Macaroons.

Innovative Online Marketing Campaign Lands 13 Reasons Why Back on The New York Times Bestseller List

In October 2008, Penguin Young Readers launched an innovative viral marketing campaign to promote 13 Reasons Why (Razorbill), Jay Asher's debut novel which came out in 2007. The hardcover now has 200,000 copies in print and has been back on The New York Times children's chapter book bestseller list for four weeks! The online campaign began with an anonymous video on YouTube featuring a cassette recorder and the disembodied voice of the book's lead character, a girl named Hannah Baker, explaining why she had committed suicide. The video has now had over 50,000 views and is rapidly spreading with bloggers around the country who are posting it on their blogs.

Penguin also recently added a comments tool onto the official 13 Reasons Why website. Within 24 hours the site had 50 rave comments posted. Within a week that number had grown to more than 200. There are now more than 400 comments posted on the site (and counting), proving the powerful impact this book has had on teens nationwide.

Great Plug for Penguin Classics on "GOOD Blog"

Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions got a great plug in a recent entry on the popular "GOOD blog" this week. Anne Trubek, who posted the piece, praised the deluxe formats, commenting:

"The people at Penguin recognize the importance of a book as an object of physical beauty - they are now making seductive editions of classic titles printed on luscious paper, with French flaps and rough fronts. In addition, the house hired top-notch graphic novelists to design original covers, making its books even more delightful and relevant. Roz Chast's hilarious cover for Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farms, with fake blurbs on the back-"If ye doan want to feel the crimson fires of hell a-lickn' at your feet, read this book!" says Amos Starkadder-makes me want to read this rather obscure novel in place of a less-enticing classic. The flaps for Chris Ware's thickly designed Candide have the cutest pictures of the protagonist and the gang prefaced by this announcement: "As a public service the publishers offer here with a handy reference guide to the Major Characters of our story, presented in authentic period costume and to scale, etc. etc."

How much for this Candide-which wryly manages to engage and excite before you read a single word? Twelve bucks. Ready to knock off whatever unread classic is haunting your reading list? Buy yourself a copy. It's not a bad way to celebrate the newly announced recession-or spend a night in bed."

Readers still can't get enough of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin). This past spring, a fan created a Facebook page for Eat, Pray, Love, completely independent from Penguin, which has grown in size to nearly 1,700 fans! In addition, over 100 people have posted messages praising the book, and sparking conversation amongst themselves, making the page a virtual book club! To check it out (or become a fan yourself!), click here.

Six new debuts for Penguin Group (USA) on The New York Times bestseller list for the week of December 14th: on the hardcover fiction list, Arctic Drift by Clive and Dirk Cussler (G. P. Putnam's Sons) hits at #3 and Princep's Fury by Jim Butcher (Ace) is at #13; The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson (The Penguin Press) is #10 on the hardcover nonfiction list; A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead) debuts at #3 on the trade paperback list; on the mass-market fiction list, The Pagan Stone by Nora Roberts (Jove) hits at #1, while T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton (Berkley) is #3.

Here are more bestseller highlights for the week of December 14th:

On the hardcover nonfiction list, Do the Right Thing by Mike Huckabee (Sentinel) is #4 in its second week, while Why We Suck by Denis Leary (Viking) is #7, also in its second week.

On the trade paperback fiction list, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead) is #5 in its thirteenth week; World Without End by Ken Follett (NAL) is #6 in its eighth week; The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin) is #9 in its 126th week; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead) is #12 in its 194th week; and In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin) is #17 in its 27th week.

On the mass market paperback list, Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris (Ace) is #7 in its twelfth week; Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris (Ace) is #14 in its twelfth week; and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon by David Michaels (Berkley) is #17 in its fourth week.

On the paperback nonfiction list, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Penguin) is #5 in its 96th week; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin) is #6 in its 97th week; and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (Penguin) is #15 in its 63rd week.

On the advice, how-to, and miscellaneous list, Real Sex for Real Women by Laura Berman (DK) is #10 in its third week on the hardcover side, while on the paperback side, I Can Has Cheezburger? by Professor Happycat and icanhascheezburger.com (Gotham) is #5 in its eighth week, while A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (Plume) is #9 in its 44th week.