Universal Studios has acquired the movie rights for In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oscar winner Tom Hanks and his producing partner Gary Goetzman may produce the project. Hanks could star in the movie as well.

Here’s more from the article: “The book tells the true tale of William Dodd, the United States’ reluctant and mild-mannered ambassador to Berlin in 1933, and his daughter Martha, a vivacious socialite who had romantic affairs with a Gestapo official and a Soviet spy.”

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Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore, Emmy-nominated comedian Mindy Kaling, and journalist Jim Lehrer will host breakfast events at this year’s Book Expo America.

Moore, author of picture book Freckleface Strawberry, will preside over the children’s writers’ breakfast. Kaling (a writer at The Office)  and Lehrer (author of both fiction and nonfiction) will host two adult writers’ breakfasts.

Here’s more from the press release: “The other speakers who will be joining the hosts for these popular events include Sarah Dessen, Roger Ebert, Anne Enright, Jefferey Eugenides, Charlaine Harris, Kevin Henkes, Diane Keaton, Erik Larson, and Brian Selznick.  In addition, Katherine Paterson, who is the current Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will be saying a few words at the Children’s Breakfast on behalf of the Children’s Book Council.”

Leonardo DiCaprio will play a real-life 19th Century serial killer in an upcoming adaptation of Erik Larson‘s book, The Devil in the White City.

Here’s more from the release: “[T]he film follows both the planning and execution of the mass murders, which take place during the city’s most profound moment on the world’s stage.In the film, DiCaprio plays the murder-minded H.H. Holmes, a cavalier charlatan who takes advantage of somewhere between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women, to develop a lucrative personal cadaver-disposal system.”

Deadline Hollywood has more about the deal, including some back-story about Tom Cruise‘s attempt to mount a production of the book. Although best known for this book, Larson is also the author of a number of nonfiction books, including Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, and Thunderstruck.