Read all about The Casual Vacancy here — hat tip, RevGeorge!

Little, Brown Book Group announces that the new novel for adults by J.K. Rowling is entitled The Casual Vacancy.  The book will be published worldwide in the English language in hardback, ebook, unabridged audio download and on CD on Thursday 27th September 2012.

The Casual Vacancy

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock.

Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.

Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…Pagford is not what it first seems.

And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.

Checking in at 20 pounds sterling or closer to $40 than $30, it certainly is a book for adults with spare change and for libraries. Let the speculation about the political fairy tale she promised or the point of this announced story begin!

In the wake of Hunger Games’ remarkable box office success and the explosion since 2008 of so-called YA titles, The New York Times’ online forum ‘Room for Debate’ sponsored a discussion  about the merits, value, and power of Young Adult fiction. They gathered a librarian, three authors of books sold in the children and YA section of bookstores (two of which satisfy the Times diversity police quotas), one teenage blogger of note, and two critics covering the ‘over the top’ and ‘just right’ aspects of the subject. These last two deserve some comment, I think, and justify the very short time you might spend reading them.

Perhaps to balance the enthusiasm of author Patricia McCormick’s ‘Authors Taking Risks Isn’t Kid Stuff,’ the Times invited Joel Stein a shock-jock columnist at TIME magazine to express the “not worthy of adult attention” point that William Safire made about Harry Potter years ago. Mr. Stein’s wonderfully wide-open disdain and his acidic view is that ‘Adults Should Read Adult Books’ – — and nothing but adult books, frankly.

The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads. [Read more…]

I know it’s Hunger Games month here at HogwartsProfessor, but as the site name suggests, we’re serious readers of Harry Potter here first and last so there’s no way the big news of Kindle availability for all seven Hogwarts Saga titles is going unheralded. You can read here about the crush to buy that all but crashed Amazon’s Kindle store when the buy possibility for the first books went viral in fandom. The first three books in the series are selling for $7.99 and the four bigger novels at $9.99, Amazon’s ceiling for the highest percentage of sales being returned to publisher as profit (though it is very unlikely that Ms. Rowling isn’t taking home almost everything she makes there…).

In a remarkable case of serendipity, all three of Unlocking Press’ companion books that open up the world’s best selling novels in unexpected ways, to profound depth, with no little humor became available on Amazon Kindle on the same day as Ms. Rowling’s work! Check out Harry Potter Smart Talk ($4.99), God and Harry Potter at Yale ($6.99), and Harry Potter for Nerds ($8.99), all three of which, an Unlocking House-elf tells me, will be available on B&N Nook in the next few days.

So, if you’re an e-reader as well as a serious reader and you’ve been waiting for years to download Harry’s adventures and revisit them one by one on your preferred device, or if Grandmom with myopia has Kindle Fire and can now find out ‘what all the fuss is about,’ get ye to PotterMore or Amazon and have a great day. If you’ve been looking for the electronic versions of these commentaries from some of the best and brightest Potter Pundits in and out of Harry Potter fandom, today is your first chance to get them at e-low-prices!

And for Hunger Games friends who think Harry Potter is “so yesterday,” your older sibling’s or youngest child’s thang, then the Kindle store special has just what you need, too. All three of Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking Trilogy are $.99 each today, 28 March, and you want to read these books, believe me. Horror meets dystopia on a Sci Fi planet nightmare — with a boy, a girl, and his dog chased by men made mad by universal mind reading… Almost as much fun as a Reaping and Hunger Games!

Have a great Kindle day whatever you’re downloading and reading!

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