Indie Surprises for Fall

Often, the only small thing about small presses is the size of their staff and budgets. The works they publish can certainly have as much sales potential as books from the big six. Soft Skull's The Whistleblower, for example, will be featured in the next Michael Moore film, while Random House recently scooped up paperback rights from Steerforth for Peter Behrens's The Law of Dreams in a low six-figure deal. If sweat equity is enough to foster success, then Milkweed Editions will surely gain a large North American following for children's author Jutta Richter, who is already a household name in her native Germany.

The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman
by Anonymous
Soft Skull (PGW, dist.), $14.95 paper; Sept.; 45,000 copies; author tour; excerpted at Alternet.org.

Soft Skull is waiting until closer to pub date to reveal the identity of the former exec behind this tell-all, which promises revelations on "everything from sex in the corner office to private investigators spying on employees," according to "Page Six" in the New York Post. "We need to keep the pharmaceutical company whose internal shenanigans are discussed in the book well in the dark until the last possible moment," says publisher Richard Nash. "Anonymous," who is still involved in lawsuits related to his former employer, will appear in Michael Moore's upcoming documentary on the health care business, Sicko, and will be a featured blogger on the Huffington Post.

Not Enough Indians: A Novel
by Harry Shearer
Justin, Charles (NBN, dist.), $19.95; Oct.; 7-city tour, including L.A., San Francisco and New York City; Book Sense white box mailing; national TV appearances.

Andrei Codrescu calls this first novel by former Saturday Night Live writer and cast member Shearer "a brilliant and crisp page-turner that answers the question that every novel must answer anew in every age: how is the road to Hell paved with good intentions?" The comedic tale about a bankrupt town that applies for Native American tribal status in order to open a casino also has a blurb from Jamie Lee Curtis and jacket art created by New Yorker illustrator Bruce McCall. Following a 1,000-copy galley giveaway at BEA, tiny Boston publisher Justin, Charles has been inundated with requests for bookstore appearances from Book Passage in Corte Madeira, Calif., to Northshire Books in Manchester Center, Vt. Shearer will also speak at literary festivals in Toronto and Portland, as well as several Jewish book fairs.

The Law of Dreams
by Peter Behrens
Steerforth (Random, dist.), $24.95; Sept. 19; author tour.

This first novel, which traces a young man's journey from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine of 1847 to the "Boston States," resonates well beyond screenwriter Behrens's New England and got a lot of buzz at BEA. Paul Ingram, buyer at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, Iowa, calls it "as moving and rich a tale of a people in dire straits as I've read." Other booksellers have been drawn to the language, which Michael Katzenberg, owner of Bear Pond Books in Stowe, Vt., finds reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy. Behrens's East Coast tour will kick off in September with an event with Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon at Blue Hill Books in Blue Hill, Maine. A West Coast tour is scheduled for January and February. Random House trade has picked up paperback rights.

The Summer of the Pike
by Jutta Richter, trans. from the German by Anna Brailovsky
Milkweed (PGW, dist.), $16.95, hardcover, $6.95 paperback; Oct.; national tour; advertising.

Although she is not yet well known here, Richter is a celebrated children's book author in Germany, where she was awarded a prestigious Herman Hesse Prize for her body of work. This YA novel about three children who try to catch a lucky fish during the summer their mother grows sick from cancer is part of Milkweed's new emphasis on world literature under editor-in-chief Daniel Slager. Bookseller Hans Weyandt, co-owner of Micawber's Bookstore in St. Paul, Minn., found it "a compelling story... [with] very smart writing," adding that despite its difficult subject, it offers plenty for kids to enjoy. To build word of mouth, Milkweed printed 300 galleys (double the number it normally does for kids' books) and gave them out at ALA and BEA.

The Museum of Lost Wonder: A Graphic Guide to Reawakening the Human Imagination
by Jeff Hoke
Weiser, $49.95 hardcover with 7 fold-out pages; Oct.; 20,000 copies with two pre-pub printings; national TV campaign aimed at the SciFi Channel and the History Channel; radio campaigns in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago; online marketing; author appearance at Comic-Con.

"Our challenge turns out to be the book's strength," says sales director Steve Fischer, referring to the difficulty of categorizing this combination philosophical meditation on human consciousness and adult pop-up book, which received a starred review in PW. Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Mich., likens the foldout pages to artist Joseph Cornell's boxes and is looking into ways to create a special display for it. Because of excitement about the book, Weiser has moved the pub date to the fall, to better position it as a holiday title.