We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending August 26, 2012. Reported by independent booksellers around the country, the list gives you a peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #4 in Children’s Fiction Series) Lorien Legacies: The Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore: “Until the day I met John Smith, Number Four, I’d been on the run alone, hiding and fighting to stay alive. Together, we are much more powerful. But it could only last so long before we had to separate to find the others…” (August 2012)

(Debuted at #10 in Hardcover Fiction) Lionel Asbo: State of England by Martin Amis: “Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England’s notorious Anti-Social Behaviour Order), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine.  He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality.  Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love (and to protect a family secret that could be the death of him).” (August 2012)

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Neil Strauss‘ The Game, law enforcement guides and Tintin comics made the list among Quora users who have been discussing the question, “What are the most frequently shoplifted books?”

The poster who posed the question wrote, “Neil Strauss’ ‘The Game’ is kept behind the counter at my local Barnes & Noble because people frequently walk out the door with it, a salesperson told me. What else do stores stash back there?”

Quora user Tamara Troup wrote: “At our library some of the most frequently stolen books are the Law Enforcement Officers training manuals, the civil service exam prep books, and the ASVAB prep books.” Quora user Alice York wrote: “At the two  public high school libraries where I have worked: A Child Called It by David Pelzer (a book about parental abuse) and The Rose That Grew From Concrete poetry by Tupac Shakur.”

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The lineup for the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature has been revealed.  The annual event will be held in New York City from April 30th through May 6th.

Novelist and PEN World Voices chair Salman Rushdie will deliver the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture this year. The festival will feature Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Graydon Carter, Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, E.L. Doctorow, Tony Kushner, Herta Müller, Marjane Satrapi, Colson Whitehead and many other writers.

Rushdie had this statement in the release: “In an era of ever-expanding ‘screen-time,’ live/in-person readings, conversations and literary performances have never been more radical or more necessary … These live events break down the invisible walls that separate us into our own solitary computer pods and re-assert the importance of dialogue, activism, and community without borders.”

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Despite the cold snap yesterday, readers from all over New York City attended the sixth annual Brooklyn Book Festival. Reportedly, it is the largest book festival in the Northeast. In the video embedded above, you can meet some of the participating authors.

Pulitzer prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri won this year’s Best of Brooklyn, Inc. award (BoBi). Lahiri was born in London, but now calls Brooklyn home. Each year, the festival recognizes a literary figure whose work embraces and speaks to the Brooklyn spirit. Previous recipients of the BoBi award include John Ashbery (2010), Edwidge Danticat (2009), Walter Mosley (2008) and Paul Auster (2007).

Festival founder and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz commented: “It’s all about the written word and how important reading is for all of us. Whether we’re kids who use reading to make ourselves into what we’re going to be in our life or whether you’re an elder person, like myself. Knowledge doesn’t stop at a certain age; it continues for life.”

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Ever since this GalleyCat editor cracked a classic Nancy Drew book’s yellow spine in the 1980s, we’ve been hooked on detective stories–from the Hardy Boys to Paul Auster.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Nancy Drew expert Jennifer Fisher–celebrating the 80th anniversary of the world’s most famous girl detective (pictured in a fancy new edition). In 2000, Fisher founded Nancy Drew Sleuths, an organization of “American and international fans and scholars” dedicated to the 80-year-old detective. Fisher talked about the life of ghostwriters in the 1930s, fan conventions, and how authors can build community online and in the real world.

Press play below to listen.

Here’s an excerpt about the life of a Nancy Drew ghostwriter: “The first ghostwriter, Mildred Wirt Benson, she wrote 23 of the first 30 books. For this particular kind of work, the ghostwriters were paid a flat fee. The fee was actually the equivalent of several month’s salary for a couple of weeks of work. It was actually pretty good money for what the job was … she definitely had to work for that paycheck, especially in the mid-1930s when her first husband became an invalid–she really had to step up the output to help the family.”

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Novelist Paul Auster‘s 22-year-old daughter Sophie (pictured, via) sang songs in New York last night at a benefit for PEN America’s Readers & Writers program. Book Bench was there, sketching the literary luminaries in the audience.

Here’s an excerpt: “Auster, who is twenty-two, is already at work on her second album and is slated to appear in two films next year. Her father, the novelist Paul Auster, was standing in the crowd as well, listening with one knee bent against the back of his seat. He looked unabashedly proud. Sophie, at moments, became more like a kid than a star, as though unaccustomed to the power of her voice. ‘This one is my, uh, Aretha Franklin song,’ she said of her last act, rolling her eyes and mussing her hair. Salman Rushdie, who was sitting across from Auster and his wife, Siri Hustvedt, tried to take a picture with his iPhone.”

Find out more about Auster’s music on her MySpace page.

As another Monday winds down, here are some odds and ends from the day’s publishing news…

Next week, Mary Gaitskill, Eric Bogosian, John Turturro, and others will read from stories written by inmates for PEN’s Prison Writing Program.

Author Stephen Fry defended Twitter and the Internets in a video interview about a generation of kids growing up online.

In a True Slant interview about “Eating Animals,” Jonathan Safran Foer talked about his move from vegetarianism to a vegan lifestyle: “my basic stance on the issue is, I’d say, forgiving–but still quite firm. I am transitioning to veganism, and I don’t like, run home and eat 1,000 eggs or something.”

Paul Auster talked about a time when all aspiring poets wanted to start their own magazines.

Beating the annual listmakers by a month, Amazon.com unveiled the Best Books of 2009.

As we close out another Monday, here are some news briefs from the literary blogosphere…

Barnes & Noble has launched a new mystery blog entitled Ransom Notes, featuring posts by Anne Perry, John Sandford, Louise Penny, and Robert Crais.

International authors sign a petition supporting the release of Roman Polanski, including Bernard-Henri Levy, Salman Rushdie and Paul Auster. A petition excerpt: “Seventy-six years old, a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland, Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.”

The Book Bench features an upcoming short film based on an Elmore Leonard story, directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt from 3rd Rock from the Sun.

The Rumpus publishes a timely essay: “A Short, Personal History of Small, Independent Publishing (1995-2009).”

As literary types speculate about this year’s nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature before the October announcement date, UK gamblers are hard at work trying to predict a winner of the prestigious prize.

According to the betting site Ladbrokes, Israeli author Amos Oz has the best odds of winning–the 4 to 1 favorite. The long shots are William H. Gass and Paul Auster, both with 100 to 1 odds. Bob Dylan clocks in with 25 to 1 odds. Americans Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth both have strong 7 to 1 odds. Haruki Murakami and Thomas Pynchon both weigh in with respectable 9 to 1 odds.

Here’s more from Monsters & Critics: “The Swedish Academy’s choice is due to be announced in October at a date yet to be announced. In recent years, the academy that awards the coveted prize, has made some surprise choices, including the 1997 selection of Italian playwright Dario Fo.”

On Friday afternoon, American readers were praised, teased, and celebrated during a lively BEA panel discussion moderated by Granta‘s newly-appointed acting editor, John Freeman. The editor grilled novelists Olga Grushin, Sherman Alexie, and Paul Auster about the literary journal’s new fiction issue and American letters.

Alexie made a controversial point about readership: “All of us are writing for college-educated middle-aged white women,” he said. “Look around you. Count!” The audience ruefully complied, testing his generalization.

Grushin recalled how she moved to the United States as a 17-year-old student and read American writers for a year straight, hoping to strike up literary conversations. “I thought I could come here and talk to people about what I read–boy was I wrong!” she said, and the audience giggled nervously. She recounted telling an American teenager that her favorite authors were Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. “I’ve never read those Russian writers,” replied her young friend.

Auster concluded the discussion with an unwavering faith in his country’s pool of writers. “This is what makes American literature so vital–it’s so full of talent that these things bubble up anyway; despite the recession, despite declining literacy rates, there are as many poets now as there ever was.”