Eastern Regional Roundup
Staff -- 08/28/2000
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NAIBA's Capital IdeaThe association returns to Washington,
D.C., with awards, authors and more

New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association
Trade show meets Fri., Oct. 6, and Sat., Oct. 7, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C.

After a long hiatus, booksellers return to the nation's capital and to the Shoreham Hotel, site of several ABA conventions back in the 1960s and 1970s. On Thursday evening, a welcome gathering is booked at Politics & Prose for exhibitors and booksellers alike. Friday exhibit hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. So booksellers can network easily, Friday's luncheon consists of a series of roundtable discussions held right on the show floor, from noon to 1 p.m. General topics include newsletters, out-of-store sales and staff training. At these discussions, participants are encouraged to talk about great ideas that work in their respective stores, and to bring up individual issues. At the same time, NAIBA presents "Pick of the Lists," where reps briefly present the season's bestsellers-to-be. At 4:30 p.m., an ABA staffer explains the next important steps toward success in the Book Sense initiative. At the Friday night reception, starting at 6 p.m., the William Helmuth Award for salesperson of the year will be given to Lou Cohen of St. Martin's.
Saturday gets off to a great start, with a book and author breakfast sponsored by Ingram Book Co. The two-hour event runs from 8-10 a.m.; there NAIBA presents its book and author awards for fiction (A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee), nonfiction (Ordinary Resurrections by Jonathan Kozol), young adult (Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson) and children's (Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride by Pam Munoz Ryan). Exhibit hours: 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Saturday's workshops are sponsored by Simon & Schuster, including one on BookSense.com slated for 10 a.m. and another on the Internet at 2 p.m. Other morning activities include the annual NAIBA meeting at 11:30 a.m. The Children's Book & Author Luncheon features Kevin Henkes (Wemberly Worried) and Mary Pope Osborne (My Brother's Keeper). Children's books are the focus of several afternoon workshops starting at 3:30 p.m., with author Pamela Duncan Edwards and illustrator Henry Cole, collaborators on Barefoot, Dinorella and Ed & Fred Flea. Meet and greet favorite children's book illustrators at the late afternoon reception set for 5 p.m.--all are welcome.

Contact:Eileen Dengler, 2667 Hyacinth St., Westbury, N.Y. 11590; (516) 333-0681; Readingent@aol.com; www.naiba.com.



What's New, New Atlantic?

Small Prices in the Big AppleThe Marble Boy, a fragmented nude statue thought to be by Michelangelo, stands in the entrance hall of the French Embassy in New York and can be viewed for free. An outfit called Adventure on a Sh string offers the least expensive walking tours in New York City--just $5, a price that has stood for 40 years. These and hundreds of other tips are compiled in the new second edition of Mr. Cheap's New York (Adams Media, May) by Michelle Roy Kelly and Jennifer M. Wood, managing editor and senior editor, respectively, of the publisher's reference book division. Wood said, "We lived in the city for a few weeks, tracking down a ton of leads for readers." New York visitors and residents alike will find ways to save money, she promises, in more than 700 new and updated listings. More info is available from Vantage Sales and Marketing, Adams's distributor.

In This Article:


Crime and BasketballLittle, Brown is sending a couple of authors to D.C. to sign books. Jane Shapiro will autograph the new paperback edition of her 1999 novel, The Dangerous Husband, and George Pelecanos will be on hand to promote Right As Rain, which launches a new series featuring a pair of D.C. PIs. According to editor-in-chief Mi chael Pietsch, Pelecanos, whose previous crime novels have solidified his reputation, takes a new turn with Right As Rain: "This is more like a suspense novel. George is embracing the genre more than he's done in the past, but he continues to bring the same literary quality to his work." Another book of interest to NAIBA attendees, said Pietsch, is The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball by John Feinstein. "John says that college basketball has become more like professional ball. For many players, it's just a waystation to the NBA. John looked for places where the game is still played by guys who bring a passion to the game, where money isn't so important, where people play just for the love of it. That's the Patriot League." Participating schools include Colgate, Lafayette, Lehigh, Bucknell and Navy.

A White House InvitationWith the White House up for grabs this year, Abbeville Press makes even private rooms accessible to everyone. "There hasn't been a book like this before," noted editorial director Susan Costello, referring to The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, with text by White House curator Betty C.
Outstanding residence
to let (Abbeville).
Monkman and photographs by Bruce White. Published in association with the White House Historical Association, the book appears on the 200th anniversary of the building's first occupancy by John and Abigail Adams. "Before the founding of the historical association in 1961," Costello explained, "pres idents and their wives routinely arrived at the White House and auctioned off the furnishings to make way for their own. Now the White House is not just a place where the first family lives and a stage for ceremonies. It's officially a museum."
Amiable Children"When a child is born to Amish parents, that infant Emma or tiny Jonas enters both a family and a community." So begins Amish Children (Good Books, Oct.), with text by senior editor Phyllis Pellman Good and photos by Jerry Irwin. "To our knowledge, there hasn't been a book devoted just to Amish children," said publisher Merle Good. "Jerry lived with the Amish in Lancaster [Pa.] for 23 years, and he sold us his collection of photographs with the stipulation that we publish them in a book." More than 150 photos document seven chapters covering the gamut of experiences from early childhood up through courtship and marriage. Today there are about 170,000 Amish in 25 states and the Canadian province of Ontario, although the majority live in Lancaster and central Pennsylvania.

A Nook of CrooksJersey City, N.J., is ground zero for a large fistful of shady characters such as those lurking in the HBO hit, The Sopranos. Ann Godoff, Random House Trade president, publisher and editor-in-chief, notes that Jersey City also provides the setting for a March release, Five Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History by Helene Stapinski. "Helene is writing about her own family," said Godoff, "which has included swindlers, bookies, mobster wannabes and assorted crooks. Their crimes were mostly small. There was a Colgate factory in town, which meant that the family never had to buy toothpaste." Actually, Godoff told PW, Five Finger Discount is as much about Jersey City and its corruption as it is about the rascally members of Stapinski's family.

Baltimore's Jewish SagaPeppered with the names of famous historical figures and leavened even more with stories about ordinary folks, Jewish Baltimore: A Family Album (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Aug.) by Gilbert Sandler profiles the city's Jewish community from the 1850s to the present. "Gil has a wide evidentiary base for this book," said Bob Brugger, history and regional books editor. "It's the first one about Jews in Baltimore that's based on a lot of research, but nevertheless, it's perfectly charming, folksy and readable." Sandler has written about this important segment of the population for several years as a contributor
Kids in Pa.; Jews in Md.
(Good Books, Johns Hopkins).
to the Baltimore Sun and the Jewish Times. "We started out with the idea of gathering Gil's best pieces and expanding upon them," Brugger told PW. "In the end, he writes about old teachers, rabbis, synagogues, delis, streets, movie theaters."
How Gotham Got That WayNew York City's Wall Street follows the line of the city wall that the Dutch erected in 1653 to protect the northern reaches of New Amsterdam from British attack. Its Houston Street (pronounced house-ton) is named for William Houstoun, a prominent Georgian who married the daughter of a Manhattan landowner. These are two of the facts among some 650 entries in Naming New York: Manhattan Places and How They Got Their Names (NYU Press, Dec.) by Sanna Feirstein. "One of the interesting things about this is that, while it's history, so much of it is new," said Stephen Magro, editor for politics and sociology. "Streets change. Names change. There's a lot of politics in naming streets, for example, like the add-on name of Yitzak Rabin Way, which is near Second Avenue and 42nd Street, not far from the Israeli Mission."

The Jersey BounceShrugging off the dreaded sophomore slump, Frederick Reiken has delivered his felicitously named second novel, The Lost Legends of New Jersey (Harcourt, Aug.), to stellar responses (including a starred PW review). Speaking about the author's well-received debut, The Odd Sea, Harcourt editor-in-chief Jane Isay said, "It was like the egg--it was the perfectly shaped small novel. Lost Legends is the gangly animal that came out of the egg. It's got edges, elbows and knees. It takes a tremendous amount of risks." The protagonist is Anthony Rubin, a high school hockey star in northern New Jersey who learns about loss, hope and survival as his parents' marriage dissolves and his 81-year-old grandfather falls in love again.
--Robert Dahlin


The First Fiction Scene

Racial drama in Virginia
(St. Martin's/Dunne).
The redemptive power of love is at the heart of Mary and O'Neil (Dial Press, Feb.) by Justin Cronin, a Philadelphia resident. Mary and O'Neil had both endured rough patches in their lives before meeting at the Philadelphia high school where they'd come to teach, and in this collection of linked stories, the two marry, celebrate the birth of their first child and grow stronger together.
In a less happy marriage, a father takes off with a redheaded bank teller, leaving behind his wife, Dotty, and their 15-year-old daughter, Lissy. In Julianna Baggot's Girl Talk (Pocket Books, Feb.), which is set partly in Bayonne, N.J., the deserted twosome take to the road and drive up and down the east coast visiting scenes from the past. "It's not a somber book, but it is powerful with some great, quirky characters," says senior editor Greer Hendricks. "It's as if you merged John Irving and Mona Simpson."

A key aide to Gen. George Washington and an American spy who disguises herself as a man fall in love as the U.S. is born in Last Refuge of Scoundrels: A Revolutionary Novel (Warner, Feb.) by Paul Lussier. John Hancock and Sam Adams are among other historical figures displaying heroism and greed and sowing the seeds for what would become a national government in Washington, D.C. Lussier is an independent producer with Warner Bros. in Los Angeles.

Two black women, Moxie and Norma, who meet at Howard University in Washington, D.C., supply the energy for Breathing Room (Pocket Books, Jan.) by Patricia Elam, also of D.C. "This will appeal to the people who read Terry McMillan," says senior editor Tracy Sherrod. "The plot here is driven by a strong female friendship." Sherrod is also the editor of Little Ellie Claus (Nov.) by James Manos Jr., a Christmas fable aglow with faith, hope and love, even though its young newlyweds are living in New York of the Great Depression. "It makes you feel like you did when you still believed in Santa Claus," says Sherrod. "There are several twists throughout, making it O. Henryesque, like The Gift of the Magi."

In New York's borough of Queens, four friends seeking sex and a decent meal animate the pages of Lookin' for Luv (Kensington paper, Sept.) by Carl Weber, who lives on Long Island and owns several bookstores, including African-American Bookstore in Jamaica, N.Y. Weber was just named Blackboard's bookseller of the year.

New York is the scene for four more first novels of wildly varying temperaments. In P.E.A.C.E.: A Novel of Police Terror (S&S, Dec.) by Guy Holmes, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., a New York of the future is monitored by thousands of video cameras and an undercover police division roaming the streets with tranquilizer guns. Crime is reduced, but at a cost to freedom and privacy. A woman fire marshal pursues the arsonist setting deadly fires in New York City in a thriller entitled The Fourth Angel (Putnam, Feb.) by Suzanne Chazin, who lives in Westchester, N.Y. Betsy Berne is chief copywriter for Calvin Klein, so she knows the intersection of Manhattan's art, jazz and magazine worlds. In her novel Bad Timing (Villard, Feb.), a 30-something single woman falls for a married jazz musician and, after their first night together, finds herself pregnant.

On a more serious note, an event that occurred in Charlottesville, Va., in 1936 inspired Bloodroot (St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne) by Aaron Roy Even. An aging black caretaker and his sister were shot dead when a white sheriff ordered them off their land. "Bloodroot is amazingly sensitive and thoughtful," says editor Melissa Jacobs. "Aaron shows all the various sides of this escalating racial standoff, and it will appeal to anyone interested in racial dynamics." Raised in Herndon, Va., Even now lives in Chicago.

A Kensington hardcover is K.M. S hnlein's The World of Normal Boys (Sept.), which is set in northern New Jersey, where tragedy strikes a boy's family, pushing him into a journey of sexual self-discovery. S hnlein lives in San Francisco.
--Robert Dahlin

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