In a packed room at the Javits Center Monday afternoon, booksellers, editors, publicists and journalists got together for what BEA show director Steve Rosato rightly called one of the fair's "marquee events." The annual Editor's Buzz Panel, which invites a handful of editors to sing the praises of one of their most promising books, is undeniably one of the most exciting events of the show. And this year, with the panel moderated by bookseller John Evans from California's Diesel, a Bookstore, bold claims about life-affirming, and life-altering, works were in no shortage. Neither, as it happens, were catchy loglines, with editors calling their books everything from "The Things They Carried meets Mean Girls" to "what you'd get if you locked Denis Johnson, Wim Wenders and Barbara Kingsolver in a room and had them rewrite Ghost...but make it good."

Kicking off the panel with the only nonfiction title featured, Millicent Bennett at Free Press talked up Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire. Bennett, who’s edited a number of high profile authors and books, including the recent National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin, began by admitting Cahalan’s book was one “I would have loved to acquire, but didn’t.” As it happens, Bennett inherited the book from Hilary Redmon, after she left Free Press for Ecco. The book follows Cahalan’s strange, and frightening, descent into madness after a rare auto-immune disorder quickly ravages her body and her mind. After landing a job as a junior reporter for the New York Post, Cahalan began having unsettling health issues which she initially dismissed as stress: hallucinations and paranoid thinking. Then, a severe seizure, landed her in the hospital, at which point her health and her mental state fell off precipitously. The book, Bennett said, is partially an “inquiry into identity and memory” as well as a powerful family saga,” and a compelling medical mystery. Bennett also grabbed the crowd, most notably perhaps, by revealing that Cahalan, who miraculously (and luckily) recovered from her medical saga, thanks largely to one doctor, is thought to have been infected by someone sneezing on her on the subway. With that Bennett noted: “enjoy the next few days in the crowded Javits Center.”

Kendra Harpster at Random House led the fiction selections with Rachel Joyce’s debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which was published by Doubleday in the U.K. in March. Joyce, a British actress who quit the stage after having children and launched a career writing radio plays (as well as teleplays for the BBC), explores, in the novel, the bizarre decision of the titular retiree to walk across England after heading out of the house one morning to mail a letter. The book has already gotten off to a strong start in Europe—it’s landed on a number of U.K. bestseller lists and recently became a bestseller in Germany—and Harpster pushed the notion that the book is disarming, heartwarming and unforgettable. She said the book, which chronicles Harold’s journey as well as its effect on his relationship with his wife, Maureen, is “a story of a love story in reverse” as “the farther Harold gets from Maureen, the more their thoughts match up.”

The lone male editor on the panel, Eli Horrowitz at McSweeney’s, was touting John Brandon’s third novel, A Million Heavens. Calling the work “funny, sad, strange, gritty, real and bizarre”—Horrowitz gets credit for the aforementioned Ghost logline—he laid out a novel with multiple storylines that, he said, surprisingly coalesce. The novel begins with a young piano prodigy, in New Mexico, inexplicably falling into a coma during a performance. The other characters drawn into the plot include a lonely mayor; a possible angel; and angry orphan on the run; a gas station owner who wants to be on the run; and a supernatural wolf that may be presiding over it all. Horrowitz said the novel “winds up being a supernatural love story, as uncomfortable as I am calling it that.” He then added that he firmly believes not every book is for every person but, in this instance, A Million Heavens is “a book for everyone.”

Tackling much weightier subject matter, Trish Todd at Simon & Schuster, had Vaddey Ratner’s debut, In the Shadow of the Banyan. Ratner survived the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia—she was a child when the regime took over in the 1970’s and instigated the genocide there—and the book is a fictionalized account of a young girl growing up in what became known as “the killing fields.” Likening the book to titles like Little Bee, The Kite Runner and The Diary of Anne Frank, Todd said the novel is ultimately an inspirational one about our ability to transcend unspeakable horror through storytelling. She elaborated: “If there was ever a book for people who believe in the power of the word, this is it.”

Trotting out another debut author, this one a mere 25 years old (who sold her book before finishing her senior year at Harvard), Alexis Washam at Hogarth touted Shani Boianjiu’s People of the Forever Are Not Afraid. The title, which is the “The Things They Carried meets Mean Girls” one, follows three teenage girls, all seniors in high school, living in a small Israeli town. The girls, engaged in the typical behaviors and obsessions that come with that age—obsessions about boys, popularity, the success of a particular party—are also growing up surrounded by violence, and all three are set to fulfill their obligatory two-year stint in the Israeli army. Washam said the book, one of the first acquired by the recently launched Hogarth imprint at Crown, offers a brilliant fusion of pop culture with unsettling violence. She said the novel “truly grabbed me by throat…and my heart.” (And, though it’s not a mathematical calculation, Washam’s plug seemed to be effective, as People of the Forever appeared to be one of the galleys snatched up the quickest on the giveaway tables after the panel.)

The last novel of the panel, and also one which seemed to be in short supply on the giveaway table, was Antoine Wilson’s Panorma City. Lauren Wein, at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, began by talking about the novel’s narrator Oppen Porter, a manchild who grew up in a bizarre and sheltering California family. Likening the narrator to such iconic characters as Holden Caulfield, Wein said Oppen believes he is on his deathbed, though he is not, and begins recording his life story for the benefit of his unborn son. The novel is ultimately about growing up, but it unravels around the journey Oppen takes—he leaves home and has a misadventure in which he encounters an array of characters; Wein described it as a “strip mall version of The Odyssey.” Ultimately, though, Wein focused on the coming-of-age element of the work, saying the novel “restores this notion that you can become a grown-up without rejecting all that’s good about being a child.”