The NY Times listed Newly Released books on Dec. 20. Although, these books will be officially published in January 2008, they will be in the stores before the new year. The new books are:

• T IS FOR TRESPASS
  By Sue Grafton

• BEETHOVEN WAS ONE-SIXTEENTH BLACK
  By Nadine Gordimer

• THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS
  By Eric Weiner

• THE VENETIAN BETRAYAL
  By Steve Berry

• THE CRAZY SCHOOL
  By Cornelia Read

• LAST CALL
  By James Grippando

See reviews about the books here

The Newly Released Books feature has always been one of the most visited sections of our site. Though we haven’t been keeping up with new books as they go on sale for a few months, we’ll try to do better in the future.

To start things off, there are two new releases for today:

• The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz. From the book’s wiki page: “A fast-paced and emotionally devastating suspense novel from the master storyteller. Amy Redwing’s risk-taking on behalf of desperate dogs is legendary. With money she inherited from a source she will never discuss, she founded and runs a group that rescues abandoned or abused golden retrievers.”
• Dreamsongs: Volume II, a collection of short stories by George R. R. Martin. (He’s best known for his fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire.)

Sales of the seventh and last Harry Potter book are, to no one’s surprise, breaking records in the publishing industry.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has thrown off concerns over internet spoilers and broken embargoes to confirm its position as the world’s fastest-selling book today, with Nielsen Bookscan estimating a staggering 2.7m copies sold in the UK of the seventh and final book during a hectic period of just 24 hours - a 35% increase on first-day sales of JK Rowling’s last blockbuster, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The figure, which includes sales through UK bookshops, supermarkets, internet sites and newspapers on Saturday July 21 2007, brings to a close a remarkable run for the popular children’s serial, which saw record-breaking sales of 1.8m copies in one day for the fifth book in the series, and 2m for the sixth. UK sales of the Harry Potter series as a whole now stand at 22.6m copies, with 72.1m copies sold worldwide.

Link to the Guardian article

The celebrated novelist Norman Mailer has walked into a critical maelstrom in Germany with the publication of his new novel - his first for 10 years - which depicts a young and adolescent Adolf Hitler.

The Castle in the Forest, which includes the bed-wetting young Hitler known as “Adi”, has been pummelled by newspaper critics and has angered Germany’s influential Central Council of Jews, which has urged artists to finally leave the history of the dictator alone.

Link to the rest of the article.

HELSINKI, Finland - A novel whose narrative consists entirely of mobile phone text messages has been published in Finland.

“The Last Messages” tells the story of a fictitious information-technology executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

Link to the Yahoo! news article

The Independent recently put up a review of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It came out in the US some time ago, but was released in the United Kingdom in hardcover today (with a fresh cover). Here’s an excerpt:

How do you write a fresh story about the Holocaust? Australian novelist Markus Zusak has cracked it with The Book Thief, which sailed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Here The Book Thief is being published simultaneously for both teenage readers and for adults, and a Hollywood weepie is on the cards.

View the full review here.

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery - which is historical fiction set in the 19th century - is out in hardcover today.

Just released in hardcover today:

• Stalemate by Iris Johansen - Thriller/Suspense
• The Ravenscar Dynasty by Barbra Taylor Bradford - Women’s fiction/Historical